Infinity club team gives Gilroy youth chance to learn new
sport
GILROY – Two young girls are the first to arrive for Thursday’s Infinity field hockey club practice at Gilroy High School.
There is nobody else around, in fact not another soul in the giant grass field, but they immediately break their sticks out and begin passing the hockey ball back and forth.
Minutes later, junior Shante Mancera casually walks up and is quickly joined by Coach Adam Gemar, who carries his own hockey stick. Soon enough, a handful of club players are passing the ball around.
It is unlike any other team practice. There is no one shouting orders. The coaching staff is just as much students of the game as they are instructors. The coaches don’t stand around. They participate in each drill.
“This is when I play,” said Gemar, who does organize the specific passing drill. “I like the sport, so I like to come out.”
Field hockey has been spreading like wild-fire within the Gilroy community in recent years and a great deal of it has to do with Erin Gemar and her husband, who formed the club team four seasons ago so their high school players could practice year-round and so others can learn the sport at a younger age.
“That’s why we started the club, so we could get younger girls involved and getting (varsity players) to play in the offseason is key,” Adam Gemar said. “A lot of new girls come out. We teach the basic skills and then refresh skills for others. Mainly, we come out and just touch the ball.”
Coach Armando Padilla also helps out along with his wife, Dianne, as well as Allison Berry. Padilla, an avid soccer player and the Mustang varsity boys coach, knew nothing about field hockey a few years ago. But after being persuaded and then tutored by Gemar, he became the junior varsity coach in addition to working with the club team.
“It is similar to soccer. You can incorporate the same soccer strategies,” he said. “Now I love it. My passion is still soccer, but I can go have fun (playing with the club team) and I also get a chance to work with kids.”
The numbers have dwindled in the final week of club practice since the team just finished up playing in its big tournament – the Cal Cup in Ventura. But it is no big deal, the interest is stronger than ever.
“When I first came out, there was maybe a dozen kids. It has grown to 60,” said Padilla before he steps back into line to take a whack. “None of that Cal Cup would be possible if it were not for Erin Gemar. She is really the key to everything.”
Infinity, which was originally called 60 Minutes, brought two teams of 24 girls to the Cal Cup over Memorial Day Weekend. Along with parent volunteers who packed their cars for the drive down, there were a total of 40 people on the annual excursion.
“It’s definitely real fun. Last year, we won a lot more games. This year even though we didn’t win as many, we were a stronger team,” sophomore Karlie Sandoval said. “It’s a learning experience. Every game you learn something new.”
The Cal Cup brings out some of the best field hockey club teams in the world for the 11-on-11 tournament. This year there were teams from Mexico, Taiwan, Canada, and around the United States. Teams are broken into divisions for girls U19, U16, U13, and U9 as well as competitive women for all ages, competitive men, and social co-rec teams.
“I was looking forward to it the whole year,” said junior Nicole Souza, who enjoyed sitting with her teammates and watching a club team called the Slime. “Their skill level was just amazing compared to ours. They looked like they were having so much fun and it makes us want to have fun out there.”
Infinity entered two teams in the 19-under girls division. Infinity #1 finished with a 1-1-3 record, while Infinity #2 lost four games. But their records were not what was important. It was the exposure to the high level of competition.
“It’s always fun to win, and a lot of our games were close. It’s just good for the girls to go down there and get the experience,” said Gemar, who has taken the Gilroy club team to Cal Cup the past four years. “We watch the competitive women and national teams.”
Practices, which are held every Monday and Thursday from 3:30 to 5 p.m., were more intense leading up to the Cal Cup. However, learning the fundamentals and having fun has always been the name of the game in Gilroy.
“For Cal Cup, we had four practices a week playing and the other two conditioning pretty hard,” said Sandoval, an All-League selection as a sophomore. “Every single practice, Adam shows me something new that he saw on TV.”
Most players are beginners when they come out and most get hooked right away like Sandoval.
“I didn’t really know anything about the game until my sister started playing,” said Sandoval, whose older sister, Jessica, played out her senior season at Gilroy High. “I wouldn’t have played without my sister. It’s cool to play with my her. She’s totally supportive.”
Mancera first learned about field hockey through her friend, Janelle Perez, when she was an incoming freshman at GHS. She decided to come out for the high school team and now plays twice a week with Infinity.
“She said we do so much running (at practice), so originally I used it more like a conditioning sport for basketball. Then I got more of a feel for the sport,” said Mancera, a guard in hoops and midfielder for hockey. “It’s definitely a sport I want to go further with if I can’t go with basketball.”
Mancera now works with the younger girls on the club team, making the game fun for them as she improves her own skills.
“I love being with the younger girls. I get along with them. It’s fun just to play around with them,” said Mancera, who was impressed with the game speed at Cal Cup. “I was just kind of amazed at how fast it was. It was non-stop running and the drives are just awesome.”
Most of the club teams competing at Cal Cup have played together for a number of years. Others are national teams made up of the top players in the respective countries.
And although the Infinity teams were not as successful as its members would have liked this year, Gilroy will catch up quickly with field hockey’s growing interest among the local youth.
“This year I thought we would be more competitive than what our record showed. It doesn’t show our progress,” Padilla said. “Most of the girls out here want to take it to the next level. … This is the grass roots.”
FIRST-ANNUAL FUNDRAISER: The Gilroy High field hockey team had 23 girls partake in its first annual 10K fundraiser run on Tuesday through Gilroy. Proceeds varied from as low as $50 per girl to as much as $480 by Mancera. Runners were rewarded based on kilometers run or by a flat rate.
