Yes, we’re guilty as charged. Guilty of singling out individual
stars from team sports in our big
”
Athletes of the Year
”
special that appeared in this section Friday.
Yes, we’re guilty as charged. Guilty of singling out individual stars from team sports in our big “Athletes of the Year” special that appeared in this section Friday.
Our excuse: it’s human nature to want to pin group success on individual heroes. It’s easier to put a face on victory when it’s an actual face, and not a whole bunch of faces all blurred together as a team. That’s why corporate CEOs get such enormous, outrageous salaries. It’s why so many of us wanted Shaq and Wade to face Amare and Nash in an NBA Finals battle of the biggest shoe contracts, rather than what we got instead – a battle of the two best basketball teams.
Maybe it’s time to step back from the star-gazing. Maybe it’s time to recall that it really is all about the team, and not the player.
That’s not to say that Gilroy High standouts Peter Mickartz, Alfonso Motagalvan, Amanda Link and Stephanie Radtke don’t deserve all the accolades we’ve given them, and more. Of course they do.
It’s just that they all had lots of help from their friends.
Motagalvan put it nicely when he said to us, “I feel the same joy in making my teammates better and having them score a goal then with scoring a goal myself.”
The senior midfielder is good enough as an individual player that he will now go on to play at an even higher level, making his new teammates better at UC Santa Barbara, the runner-up in last year’s NCAA soccer championship. The team attitude, strangely enough, is what makes him an individual star.
So here’s to all the stars on all the teams that represented GHS this past school year.
Here’s to all the wrestlers who helped Gilroy to another TCAL championship and another CCS title, and who made the five grapplers who went to the State Finals better every day in practice.
Here’s to a football team that had a historic victory over Palma in the regular season, then went on the best postseason run by a Mustang squad in 20 years. Here’s to the linemen who opened the way for Justin Sweeney’s record-breaking rushing totals. Here’s to the special-teamers who made Neil Martin’s kickoffs count. Here’s to the second-stringers who pushed the first-stringers to new heights as a team.
Here’s to the interchangeable parts on a girls’ basketball team that made it to the CCS semifinals. Here’s to a backcourt rotation that opened games up, and a frontcourt that locked them down.
Here’s to two teams that missed the playoffs but should have made them. Here’s to a boys’ volleyball team that finished second in TCAL but wasn’t invited to the postseason because TCAL is a ‘B’ league. Here’s to a softball team that struggled in league play – though it beat eventual CCS Division I champion Live Oak – but wasn’t invited to the playoffs because the CCS selectors underestimated just how strong TCAL softball really is.
Finally, here’s to all the Gilroy High athletes who toiled away at sports that aren’t in the spotlight. Sports like badminton, which don’t get a thimbleful of the news coverage that basketball, football, baseball and softball do. Sports like tennis and water polo, that at a public school play David to the Goliath-like programs in place at the wealthy private schools in the area.
Here’s to the Mustangs, past and present, and to the future generation that will take their place.
