By Sophia Xiao
Last month, Boys’ Soccer kicked off with an exciting start to the season. While still in preseason, the team competed in the Christmas cup, a local tournament with a current score of 1-1-1. The team also played their first game that counted towards league this Monday with Saratoga High. The next league game is a home game this Wednesday against Independence High.
“These past 3-4 weeks, we (have had) preseason, so something Varsity’s doing new this year is the Christmas tournament,” explained sophomore Benjamin Calderon.
“We’re doing pretty well (in the Christmas Cup),” said Varsity member Rajguru Purewal. “The team is more structured. Overall, the team’s cooperation is doing a lot better this year.”
Varsity lost their final Christmas Cup game last Saturday with a score of 5-3.
With the regular season starting soon, the team had high hopes for themselves this year.
“I think the main goal for us would be to get out of C division, and for us to be winning the league,” said Varsity member Oscar Rodriguez.
In order to achieve their goals, they decided to focus their energy on gameplay.
“We’re not doing as much conditioning as we did last year, because we were really tired last year. We weren’t really playing with the ball that much. We weren’t practicing our strategies enough, so that may have led to how we performed last season,” elaborated Rodriguez.
Another thing the team worked on throughout practices was building chemistry with each other.
When asked about the importance of teamwork, Calderon replied, “Definitely, particularly in this sport. If you don’t talk a lot, you don’t communicate to your team, you could just end up kicking the ball around and never doing anything with it.”
The teamwork aspect of the game was also what many players loved about the sport.
“I’ve been playing it forever, and it’s fun,” recounted sophomore Saranjit Singh. “The coach really pushes you. (I like) just being out there on the field with my team.”
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