Anzar Girls Basketball lead PCAL Santa Lucia League

Lea este articulo en español aquí.

The girls of the Anzar High School Hawks basketball team went into their game on Feb. 9 dominating the league with nine wins behind them and two days to go before the championship. Standing in first place in the Pacific Coast Athletic League’s Santa Lucia division, they had every expectation of beating their opponents, the second-place Santa Catalina Cougars, which they had bested on Jan. 9 by a score of 31-27.

“That was the best game so far,” said Isabel Alvarez, one of three seniors on the team. “We played really hard and brought a lot of energy. A lot of that strength comes from the bond we have from playing together for the last two years.”

But things went wrong…

Throughout the first and second quarters, the Hawks trailed the Cougars, finishing the half down 10-6. They came out strong in the third quarter, taking the lead for most of it but faltering at the end, going into the fourth quarter tied at 16-16. They could not regain their momentum and lost 30-18.  

“We talked after the second quarter and reassessed our passes,” said Anahi Martinez, a senior. “We reassessed our passes because they were bad. We tried to fix them and it was good until it wasn’t!” 

Martinez considered this year’s 25-17 win against the Oakwood Hawks to be the best game of the season.  “Last year, we had a lot of trouble against them,” she said. “But this year, we beat them by eight points, which I think shows how much we have improved.”

They meet Santa Catalina again in their next—and final—game at noon on Feb. 13 and those two previous games were on senior Haley Garcia’s mind. 

“We played really well against them before,” she said, “but this night, our passes were a little bit funky and dangerous. We need to work on our basketball IQ, which is my stronger suit. But we’re really good at defense and team communication and I think we have definitely grown.”

Coach Gilbert Grio said that one reason for the loss was that a strong player, Ava Kapadia, was not able to play that night. 

“We’re a short team and she’s our tallest player,” he said. “This team is tall—a lot taller—and she is usually there to help us with the rebounds.”

He said the biggest cause, however, was the number of turnovers which he says is a problem the girls have been working on.

“When the turnovers started to happen,” he said, “that’s when we gave it up.  It is just a matter of taking care of the ball and we have talked about that.”

Grio said that he was optimistic about going into the final game and he has great faith in his team.

“Their strength is they play like a team,” he said. “They play well and they look for each other. It’s not one person scoring all the time. it’s a different person all the time and they are looking for an open person. They’re not selfish. They’re a good team and good girls.”

The Hawks have their final game on Feb. 13 at noon at Santa Catalina High School, located at 1500 Mark Thomas Drive in Monterey.  The game decides the champion of the PCAL Santa Lucia League.

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