The Palo Alto High School Vikings girls’ varsity soccer team (6-6-3) is set to face off against the Soledad High School Aztecs (17-2-1) in the first round of the Central Coast Section playoffs at 5 p.m. today at home.
According to head coach Jeremy Romero, this match will be determined by how well each team executes their game plan.
“They have some really good players, and we’re going to be ready for them,” Romero said. “We’ve been practicing certain things to prepare and get us ready for certain players that they have, and it’s just about execution. When it comes to tomorrow, it’s just who’s going to execute better. We know they’ll get chances. We know we’ll get chances. It’s just, can we limit theirs and capitalize on ours.”
Senior and captain Ella Hwang, who has been on the team for all four years at Paly, said that making it past the first round of CCS would be a breakthrough for the team.
“Every year that I’ve been on the team, we’ve made it to CCS but have never made it past the first round,” Hwang said. “I do have higher hopes for this year, and I think we all really want to move forward.”
According to Hwang, the team has been training fitness and working on reaching their peak performance earlier.
“We’ve been working on our fitness so that we can make sure every player is 100% throughout the whole game, especially towards the end when we get really tired and lose some steam,” Hwang said. “I think what we really need to work on is our attitude going into the game, since a lot of times we start kind of slow and then build up to full intensity. Giving it our all from the beginning will really help us.”
Romero said that the Vikings have built up their focus during practice.
“Everyone knows that when they come to practice, everything else doesn’t matter the moment they’re on the field,” Romero said. “When it comes game time and we start our warmup, we’re going to be locked in from the moment we start our warmup till the end of the game.”
According to Romero, the halfway point in the season was a critical moment for the team.
“I think about halfway through the season, we hit a pivot, and things could have started going downhill from there,” Romero said. “But the girls came together and they turned for the better, and they decided at the halfway-through-the-season point to give this playoff push a go, and continue to grind it out. It shows that with hard work and dedication like good, things will come in your way.”
