The Palo Alto High School girls’ soccer team (12-0-1, 7-0-1) shut down the Homestead High School Mustangs (6-8, 2-6) last Friday with an impressive final score of 5-0.
The Vikings demonstrated their deft performance in defense and inter-team communication with three assists from senior center-midfielder Ansley Queen throughout the game and another assist from senior forward Nika Woodfill to center midfielder Emily Tomz who then scored the first goal of the match. Seemingly in a continuous streak of back-to-back goals the Paly girls’ went on to score a second goal 15 minutes in by Junior defender Talia Malchin and a third and fourth goal, both by Woodfill, within the first 35 minutes. By the 36 minute mark Alison Lu finished with the fifth goal, setting the score to an impressive 5-0.
“We have been really successful so far this year, our defense is phenomenal” Tomz said in an interview following the match. “Our team communication on the field has been pretty good this season, and has greatly improved by being positive and motivational. A lot of that is because of our captains, Jacey Pederson and Heidi Moeser, who are extremely nice, funny and bring the team together on and off the field.”
Senior Captain Moeser described some initial difficulty given the team already had two games previously in the week, leaving little energy for the Friday match.
“We came off two games this week, so it was initially difficult given we were so tired, but we really battled and stayed strong,” Moeser said. “I would say this was one of our better games, and morale is high given our undefeated status.”
Homestead players,junior forward Christina Klariss and sophomore left-mid Laura Salvaggio shared their thoughts on their teams performance during the match.
“Palo Alto is a really good team, and it was difficult to keep up with their speed,” said Klariss, “We’ve hadn’t played our best the first half and Palo Alto definitely took advantage of that, but for the second half we really showed what we are capable of. Paly didn’t score on us in the second half at all, and I think that really demonstrated how we can rise above a previously negative situation.”
“We came into the game preparing for defeat,” said Salvaggio. “But we still kept in mind that we needed to prove our skill, which we really did during the second half.”
The Paly girls’ will have their next match at 3:30pm this coming Wednesday at Milpitas.