Gilroy remained undefeated by beating Saratoga 3-0 on Wednesday,
giving the Mustangs their first win over the school in program
history.
GILROY – Gilroy remained undefeated by beating Saratoga 3-0 on Wednesday, giving the Mustangs their first win over the school in program history.
Gilroy lost 5-3 to Saratoga last year and 1-0 in 2006.
Lexi McPhail, who was awarded the Stick of the Game, scored the first goal of the contest on a short corner, receiving assists from Dani Hemeon and Laura Spellman.
“We tried some new short corner plays and ‘Yea! They worked,” joked coach Adam Gemar. “For years we’ve been in a short corner drought. I told the girls, ‘If we score one, we should win. If we score two, there’s no way we should lose.’ ”
Gemar added that the recent play of McPhail has been phenomenal.
“She’s been playing wide right defender and we’ve been working with our outside defenders to move up on the attack and overlap,” he said. “They’re just making the right moves at the right time.”
The Mustangs’ second goal came through a nifty redirect by Jennifer Rose on a blast by Elise Ogle. Ogle then capped off the scoring by making a shot of her own, this time slotting a penalty stroke into the top right corner of the net.
“It was a beautifully placed goal,” Gemar said.
The Mustangs are now 3-0 and confidence is high after beating the likes of Saratoga and Los Gatos, as well as pounding York 7-0 earlier in the week
“Beating Los Gatos was a huge victory,” Gemar said. “The girls really wanted to beat Saratoga. They were really up for it.”
While Gemar cautioned that overconfidence could hurt the club, the coach stated that there are only two teams in the Central Coast Section that currently possess as much talent as the Mustangs: Archbishop Mitty and St. Francis.
“Right now, with Los Gatos and Saratoga, man for man, our players who are out there, we have 11 players that are better than the other 11 players out there,” he said. “There’s not a weakness out there. And we have bench players who are strong.
“In the past, we’ve never been able to field every spot with 100- percent confidence.”
Gilroy hopes that confidence now carries over to a successful showing in the Leigh Roundup, a tournament which will take place at Leigh High School on Saturday. The Mustangs’ first game will be at 4 p.m. against the host school, followed by a 5 p.m. contest against Corning.
The junior varsity squad will also be competing after Gemar and staff decided to pull out of the Willow Glen Invite this year for the Roundup.
“We opted out of the Willow Glen tournament because of poor field conditions and because JV can be included,” he said.
