Central Valley Championships Re-cap

(go to website for pics)The varsity traveled to beautiful Turlock this weekend to competed in the Central Valley Championships. Hope you got a sense of the sarcasm. It was hot and stinky! This 5 game overnight tournament we have been attending since the early 90's. It's become tradition. We brave the heat, long drive, 5 games in 2 days, but have a ton of fun. We learned a great deal about ourselves this weekend. Improvement was seen in a lot of different areas as the weekend progressed. Game 1 began with an eye opening game for us. We faced Sonora, the eventual champion of the 18 team tournament. They came at us quick and were very aggressive. We suffered the loss 12-4. We then faced another top finisher in the tournament, Golden Valley. Boy we had a tough bracket draw. These boys were big, but we matched their intensity and physicality once we settled down. Unfortunately it was not enough to come out victorious, but we were pleased with the desire and passion we saw from our boys. Final score was 12-5 (but we were in the game down only 8-5 at the beginning of the 4th). The boys rebounded the next day with a nice win against Grace Davis 15-4. We then faced and defeated Los Banos 10-5. That win moved us back up into the winner's bracket where we faced the host team Atwater. We defeated Atwater 8-5. So after dropping the first two games we bounced back and won the next 3 finishing 3-2 on the weekend.

Leading Scorers:
Jay Louis - 10 goals
Ben Evered - 9 goals
Nate Cohen and Kai Harper - 5 goals each
Sean Pickert - 4 goals
Jakub Kristl - 13 saves

Brady Hopkins played excellent 2M defense the entire weekend. Ben Regan was a solid contributor on the counterattack and defensively.

In other news. Due to the outstanding leadership, team focus, hardwork, and valuable play in the pool the coaches and I decided to make an addition to the captain list. We named Kai Harper co-captain. He has done more than prove himself this past month and a half. We're proud of you Kai. Keep it up!

We face a very tough league opponent in Salinas this Wednesday at Hartnell college. The JV will play at 3:30 and the Varsity will start at 4:30. Salinas is by everyone's account, the front runner once again for the league title. It will be a tough match and a great test to determine where we are as a team and a program at this point in time.

Coach Gaily