For the first time in 22 years the girls’ varsity team had a new coach. Coach Robert Gomez took over the reins in November after being hired to teach Freshman Seminar in October. The change was a bit of a challenge. Gomez said, “Getting to know all the girls right as the season was starting and trying to coach them at the same time was a bit hard.”  

This was not Gomez’s first job, he has been coaching since he was in college. He said, “I coached the freshman team at Watsonville High School while I was in college, then I coached at Pajaro Valley the first year after I graduated college. I was the boys’ varsity coach for 7 years and for 5 years I was the athletic director. The last two years I was the assistant coach at Watsonville and now I’m here.”  He’s only been coaching boys until now. “There’s not much difference between coaching guys or girls, except I think that girls are a little easier to coach because they try really hard and motivate themselves, whereas boys you have to try to motivate them a lot more.”

Despite the team’s 3-9 preseason record, Gomez wasn’t overly concerned. “Preseason was a little bit rough with Christmas break we played a lot of games short handed, but the goal was to get ready for league, and I think we accomplished that.”

Although the team dropped its league opener to Alvarez, it bounced back to win the next seven and finished 10-2, good enough for first place in the MBL’s Pacific Division. “Some of the girls have experience from last year where they competed for a title. They got really close, so I know that’s their goal, to finish off what they fell short of last year.” Gomez also mentioned that it was his first championship, “I think that the girls have really grown into what I was trying to do, I think that’s why we were very successful in the end.”

Gomez said that his team had improved as a whole overall, “Lydia really picked up the slack during the break and took more of a scoring roll. Karely’s (Apodaca) first game was against Watsonville and she came back and scored 24 points, so she kind of came right back in into her role and Lydia had 25. I think it kind of helped our team grow a little bit because some girls didn’t have to do as much as before when we were missing people. Brittney (Rodriguez) stepped up and played really well. Cassandra Benavidez has stepped in, she didn’t miss any games and she improved big time.”

From the player’s perspective, junior point guard Lydia Garcia agreed with her coach. “I feel that we improved a lot as a team and everybody has improved individually. We learned how to play together- most of us for the first time.”

In the end Gomez couldn’t have been any prouder of winning the 3rd championship in school history. “The girls put a lot of hard work, the first time I met with them I explained that our goal was to win a championship. I think they’ve maybe surprised a lot people by winning a championship this year because they kind of did better than anybody thought they would do. They were a good group of girls, an exciting group, just because I don’t think much was expected of them. They’ve kind of rose above the expectations, they put a lot of work on their own as well, and little things win championships,” said Gomez.

In the Division 1 playoffs, the team earned a home game against Salinas, which they lost 42-33. Gomez earned Coach of the Year honors, Garcia and Apodaca were 1st Team All League, and Garcia was also league MVP.