The Palo Alto High School boys’ soccer team will kick off its season against Los Altos High School at 3:30 p.m. tomorrow at Los Altos after a month-long preseason.
The preseason, during which the Vikings went 4-3-1, allowed the team to adjust itself to new teammates and better understand each others’ skills.
“We’re getting to the point where we’re getting to know how players can play, with their strengths and weaknesses, and getting a line up that works out and uses everyone’s strengths,” head coach Donald Briggs said.
The Vikings also became accustomed to playing with a younger team, according to assistant coach Amir Malekpour.
“Because it’s a pretty young team … there are a lot of freshmen, sophomores and juniors who haven’t played with each other much before, but it [the preseason] helped us see how the players played together,” Malekpour said.
Additionally, sophomore left midfielder Siddharth Srinivasan expressed that the team will be better prepared for the regular season because of its preseason experience.
“We had some good and bad results, and we’ve learned from our bad results,” Srinivasan said. “We’re looking to not make those mistakes during our league season.”
Most recently, the team lost, 4-3, at the Oak Grove Gold Cup tournament finals. However, players are optimistic that they will be able to move past this preseason loss.
“It’s been a pretty good preseason,” junior center back Steven Blatman said. “We’ve won most of our games, but we did suffer a tough loss in the final of our last tournament. Hopefully, we can forget about that, play how we’ve been playing, and … come out with a win.”
Malekpour also believes that the team will succeed as long as it goes into the game with the proper mentality.
“We don’t want to be scared of our opponent,” Malekpour said. “We should be able to fight hard. The boys won’t back down; they’re a good bunch.”
Ultimately, the Vikings are excited to start off the new season.
“We are all pumped to play our first game tomorrow as it will really show how good we are as a team and how this season will go,” Blatman said.