The Lady Knights are back intact,
but don't rule out some surprises
The SCISL girls varsity season features a championship team with all its players returning, which should make forecasting simple. But it does not.
Remember that this is the division where last year the team that finished first during the regular season finished last in the playoffs, and the team that finished last during the regular season came within a few points of winning the championship.
Partly because no team has developed the kind of shooting skill that can make victory sure, anything can happen – and frequently does. Here is a preview with the teams covered in the topsy-turvy order that they finished last year.
The Knights are back, and seeking vindication
The Cambridge girls varsity will have a familiar look when they take the floor this season. Almost all of the key players from last year’s championship team are back. (There may be some new faces, but Cambridge has not yet had a practice that included new arrivals at the school as of this writing.)
Leading the team once again, as she has for the past two seasons, is senior Raquel Lopez, whose quietly ferocious will to win was perhaps the team’s biggest asset last year. If Cambridge were to win the championship this year, it would be the school’s – and Lopez´-- third in a row.
Also returning are Maira Lino, the best outside shooter in the League on her good days, and junior Mariana Escaño, who has been a standout since eighth grade.
Those three will be supported by several more seasoned players, including seniors Vania Rueda and Karen Aliaga, as well as freshman Lucia Candia, a standout on last year’s junior varsity.
The lone loss is 10th grader Camilla Johnson, who has enrolled at International and may well be heard from there.
So why isn’t the victory of the Knights a foregone conclusion? Mainly because last year they were so famously inconsistent, hot as firecrackers one minute, cold as ice the next. They never got the knack of making winning look easy. In one game they scored 19 points in the first half – an impressive total in this League – then didn’t tally again in the rest of the game.
They still won that game, and the championship, with both achievements based mainly on the aggressive, smothering, stick-like-glue defense for which Cambridge teams have become well known under hard-driving coach Victor Coronado.
Defense ultimately enabled them to prevail in the championship game against Cooperative, which went into overtime, and in their semifinal victory over Christian Learning, which will be remembered as one of the hardest-fought games in League history.
Still the feeling remains that if another team can get hot on a day when the Knights are not, that team can prevail.
Jaguars were hard-luck team turned Cinderella
The Cooperative varsity pushed Cambridge to the limit in last year’s championship game, and should be a threat to take the championship this year, even though it was something of a miracle that they got to the finals at all.
The Jaguars had suffered through a year from hell, losing five of their six regular season games with most of the losses coming by two points or less, one in overtime. Many of the players were eighth graders, and they made the kind of mistakes that come from inexperience. Still, they were able to rally in the playoffs – and almost take the championship.
The Jaguars have only lost only one starter, Nataly Noguer, and have a returning star in Top Ten scorer Cecelia Aponte, a junior, who will be augmented by her sister, Natalia Aponte. In addition most of those young, inexperienced players from last year are back – and a lot less inexperienced.
These freshmen include Ana Paola Peredo, Sofia Sotelo, Nicole Broersma, Ana Paola Justiniano, Carla Limpias, and Audrey Saucedo. They have proved their talent. As JV players they once tallied 74 points in a single game, more than any other team in the League, varsity or junior varsity, boys or girls, has scored in one game in the entire history of the League.
International must learn to live without Zelada
The International girls varsity achieved respectability last year, winning the first two regular season games in their history, one of them against Cambridge, the eventual League champion.
In the playoffs the Griffins defeated Christian Learning, which had been the regular season champion, in the consolation game, thereby rising to third place in the League for the first time.
It would be nice to say that their progress is sure to continue this year, but that could be a tough assignment.
Both Daniela Zelada, who lead the League in scoring last year, and Melisa Roca, another outstanding player and Top Ten scorer, have graduated. The task of filling their shoes will fall to juniors Stephanie Gioto and Maria Isabel Barrenechea, both of whom made major contributions to the team last year.
Coach Eduardo “Presi” de la Riva is counting as well on the rapid maturation of juniors Regina Landivar, Adriana Ocampo, and Matilda Gamarra, as well as freshman Laura Gioto. Last year they learned defense, he says. This year they are developing offensive skills as well.
And, as noted, he will have former Cambridge starter Camila Johnson on his roster this year.
Will Christian Learning be rebuilding – or revenging?
Last year’s Christian Learning girls team was a puzzle. They won the regular season championship with a 5-1 record, then mysteriously crashed and burned in the playoffs, losing to Cambridge in a battle royale semi-final, then losing the consolation game to International, putting them fourth in the post-season tournament.
The heart of that team has graduated. Playmaker Roxy Jien, high-scorer Sabrina Hallock, star forward Ann Marie Hawthorne, and speedy Jennifer Lau are all gone. At any other school those losses would make the coming year a “rebuilding” year. But maybe not at Christian Learning, which has rarely been short of basketball talent.
No report has come in from Coach Mike Warren, who is moving up from assistant coach last year, but on paper he has the nucleus a strong team in sharp-shooting junior Kaylyn Lampen, and sophomore Tabitha Malloy, an experienced player under the basket. In addition, Cristina Chun and Ruth Nyquist saw plenty of action this year, and could step up this year.
No one ever counts the Eagle girls out, and there’s no question but that they have some scores to settle around the League.
