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As the San Juan Bautista Youth Soccer League begins its second year as an organization, the U16 girls soccer team, the Elites, is looking back on a great first season and ready to improve their standing in the upcoming games.
“I think everybody had a lot of fun,” said Justin Garmin, Vice president of the league. “We had some wins, had a couple losses we learned from, but overall it was a great year for everybody.”
That great year included winning three out of the five tournaments in which they played: the JSC Tournament of Champions, the 2024 Summer Tall Trees Tournament and the 2024 California Rush Spring Cup.
Overall, they ended with a record of 16 wins, four losses and two ties, scoring 57 total goals with only 14 scored against them. And they lost each of those four games by only one goal.
And they came within one goal of beating one of the top teams in Northern California, Visalia High, in the battle to qualify for the Cal North State Cup, which so impressed the organizers that they invited the team to the regionals, even though they lost.
“We had a decline just because of funds,” said assistant coach Ricardo Torres. “It was too much of a financial burden to a lot of our families. But they loved our team and welcomed us with open arms.”
That welcome gained them a seat on the board for District 2, which covers all of Monterey County, San Benito County and South San Jose, and they have joined in a partnership with the San Jose Earthquakes.
“We are now very involved,” Torres said. “It’s opened up a lot of opportunities for our girls and the team, a lot of invites for scrimmages and things that we weren’t getting before. So I think we did pretty well for ourselves in our first season.”
The one down-note for the league is that the boys team, which practiced in Castroville last year, is no longer part of the organization, moving on to build their own club.
“They won the Cal North championship in their division last year” Torres said, “so they are very good players. We are doing what we can to help them and support them.”
Torres said the decision to move the girls from a strictly recreational club to a competitive club was encouraged by the team’s strength and talent.
They have already shown their abilities this season, which began earlier in March with the team winning the Copa Surf tournament in the “Best of the Southwest” division, which qualifies for the Surf Cup, a worldwide competition.
“One of our original goals when we went competitive was to make it to the Surf Cup,” Torres said. “It is a very strong, very popular tournament to go to. It’s coming up in July and we’re really looking forward to it.”
With four months to prepare, one small obstacle is that about half of the team is on the track and field teams at Hollister and Anzar High Schools, cutting down on soccer practice time. However, Torres said, they will be getting good conditioning that will help them in the coming months.
Player Jaylen Yniguez, 15, said that the close relationships within the team give them a great advantage going into the new season.
“If you don’t have a bond,” she said, “then you don’t really know how to play together. Our controlling, our passing to each other, knowing that our players are in their positions already, knowing when they are open. We are just comfortable playing with each other.”
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