Girls Varsity Soccer Ends With 4th Place at Cats and Hounds Tournament

On Friday, December 8th and Saturday, December 9th the Varsity Girls soccer team headed to San Luis Obispo for a two day tournament.

By: Lucas de Lima and Mikayla Williamson

The Rangers played 4 games in total over the duration of the weekend, with two on Friday against Templeton and Santa Ynez. They swept Friday with two wins; 2-0 against Templeton and 3-0 against Santa Ynez.

They had another two games on Saturday, a 2-1 loss to Paso Robles, and a 2-2 draw with San Luis Obispo.

Samantha Norton, ’25, felt the impact of the long weekend. She says, “It’s definitely exhausting having to put that much effort in over and over again. Especially in such a short amount of time.”

Norton has a positive outlook on the tournament. She says, “Overall I think we definitely improved over the course of the whole tournament. We didn’t get the outcome that we wanted to, especially since we won it last year.”

“Our chemistry especially really grew, especially from that first game to the last one,” says Norton.

When looking back on the tournament, Alexis Rico, ’25, says “I feel like we could have taken the tournament. We did struggle a lot to connect with each other and play together as a team. But in the end, on our last game, we finally figured it out.”

“I feel like I could have done better, but overall I feel like I did pretty good. Then I got hurt [during] the second to last game,” Rico says.

Rico got a concussion during the loss to San Luis Obispo. She attributes this to “the teams we’ve been playing are kinda reckless. It’s just early in the season. Later on it’ll be fine,” she says.

Lilah Vargas, ’26, agreed with her teammates, saying, “It was really tiring, we were all so tired and everyone was sore during the tournament.”

Vargas is one of many on the team who is injured, so she didn’t play during the tournament. A week and a half ago, Vargas was benched due to an injury suffered while with her club soccer team. She is not allowed to play until after winter break, and by then she should be healed and healthy to return playing.

Vargas says, “The bench can be fun sometimes. You get to cheer on your teammates and have a good perspective of the game. It’s not that bad.”

“There was a lot of people that got hurt during the four games. Avery Yagle got a pretty bad concussion right before the tournament so she was out, and Lainey Rowe too.”

“Our defense line wasn’t as strong because we have so many people out. It’s just hard knowing a lot of your starting defenders are all hurt,” Vargas says.

She concluded by saying, “We definitely could have won the whole thing, it’s just that we were all in our heads about stuff the whole time.”

The Rangers will start their East Yosemite League title chase at home on Tuesday, January 9th at 6:00 PM against the El Diamante Miners.

There were many lessons to be taken from this preseason tournament. Rico finds that “Connection is the most important part of soccer, because if you don’t connect with your teammates, the passes, then nothing’s going to happen, so we just need to work together more.”

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