GHS girls bow to Acorns
While nothing is ever guaranteed, it’s almost inevitable that Live Oak will always bring a powerful girls’ water polo team to face Gilroy.
“We know every year how strong Live Oak is,” senior Lauryn Rossi said. “I guess we’ve come to expect it.”
So just as advertised, the Acorns traveled to GHS Wednesday and took care of business early, storming to a 7-0 lead by the end of the first period and easing their way to a 14-7 victory.
For the Acorns, junior Ronnie Gautschi led the way with seven goals. Rossi, often double- or triple-teamed, paced the Mustangs with five scores.
“Our girls played hard,” GHS coach Andy Been said, “but they’re a better team and we know it.
“It’s just a better class of swimmers.”
Of course, it didn’t help Gilroy’s cause that Live Oak turned in a sterling effort on defense, an area Acorns’ coach Bryan Traverso noted “has been kind of a sore point all season.”
“I was happy with the play overall, but especially our defense,” he said. “In the first half when the starters were in, I thought it went very, very well.”
How well? The Mustangs didn’t get a shot off in the first period and didn’t score until they were already down 8-0.
By halftime, the Acorns led 12-3 and were able to play mostly second-teamers in the latter stages of the game.
“That’s the best team defense we’ve played all year,” Gautschi said.
Team was the key, teammate Alyssa Hendrick.
“Its been kind of individual … a lot of us have our own little defensive strategies,” the junior said. “Today we worked as a team.”
It also looks like the Acorns have recovered from a disappointing 2-2 tournament showing two weekends ago at Menlo Park.
“We lost two games that we easily should’ve won,” Traverso said. “It was really just a lot of little miscues.
“But we worked on it, and it was nice to see the results today.”
The Acorns next face league contender Santa Catalina on Tuesday at home. For the Mustangs, now 4-6, it’ll be a matchup with Robert Louis Stevenson at GHS next Thursday.
“We’ll definitely have to just move past this,” Rossi said. “We’ll get our confidence back to where it was before.”
Record day for Mustangs
On Monday, the Gilroy field hockey team managed a 6-0 victory on a Carmel field covered with holes and high grass.
On a more player-friendly field Wednesday at GHS, the Mustangs led the same Carmel team 6-0 at halftime.
It didn’t get any prettier in the second half, as Gilroy ran right though the Padres for a 14-0 victory.
In the six years Adam and Erin Gemar have coached the Mustangs, not one of their teams had ever scored in double-digits.
“Once it gets to 10 goals, the clock doesn’t stop after every score,” Erin Gemar said. “We’ve never had to follow that rule before.”
With the win, the Mustangs moved to 9-2-1 overall and 6-0-1 in MTAL play. Gilroy, which outshot Carmel 36-5, has pitched a shutout in each of its seven league games.
Offensively, the ‘Stangs received hat tricks from sophomore Kelly Perkins and senior Elena Ramirez, who became the first player in the Gemars’ tenure to score three goals in back-to-back games.
After scoring eight times all of last season, Ramirez has 14 goals in 2004.
“Elena’s exploded,” Adam Gemar said. “She’s a stud for us right now.”
Six other players scored for the Mustangs: Meg Perkins, Dana Schoeneman, Danielle Roberts, Amanda Spellman, Lindsey Valadez and Karlie Sandoval, who also added six assists.
For the pair of freshmen – Spellman and Valadez – the blowout victory offered up an opportunity to score their first career goals.
“That was kind of special,” said Spellman, who was awarded the team’s honorary MVP stick after the game. “I was really excited about it.
“This is my first year of playing and I’ve been working really hard.”
