Last year was a historic year for the girls’ varsity basketball team. They won league, with a 13-1 record, and they made it to the 2nd round of the state tournament. They finished with a 24-4 record and they were the first girls’ basketball team in Alisal history to make it to the state playoffs. “It is a big statement for everybody in our community,” Coach Claudia Moran, who has been coaching the varsity girls’ basketball team since 2021, said. After having such a significant season last year, this year’s team has high hopes and expectations.
Entering this season, the team is confident they can perform well, despite losing point guard, Lesly Rodriguez Treviño, and center Yulissa Alvarez to graduation. “There’s a lot of things that we’ve got to get better at, grow, and make a couple of changes, but we’re on the right track,” Moran said.
Although the team has been very successful during preseason, they have also had their hard moments that have made them realize that they need to work harder. “It’s just, like, hard because I think sometimes we don’t have the right mentality going into it and we just have to think, like, oh, like it’s going to be a breeze and in reality it’s not, and we need to put the work in,” senior shooting guard Alyssa Annis said. She has been playing with the varsity team for 3 years.
With the help of returners, Mia Rivera, Nayeli Gil-Silva, Alyssa Annis, Isabella Gonzalez, Syree Barrios, Yarit Rodríguez, Audreyna Ruiz, Aileen Gonzalez, and Milagros Santiago, the team continues to have a strong core. “The beautiful thing about basketball is that you make a mistake and you keep going…They are at that level and that’s why we move up,” Moran said.
The team also does a good job motivating each other and helping each other to keep going. “I think the people around me that have influenced me the most are probably Mia Rivera, Naye, and Milagros because we go back and forth and it’s like a little competition to push each other to get better,” Ruiz said.
Going into this season, Moran’s expectations were very high, but still met during this preseason, where they finished 7-3 and won the St. Francis Lady Shark Shootout. “Knowing that we were going to San Jose, I was actually looking forward to winning six, but we actually won seven out of the ten,” Moran said.
Starting league, the players are expecting to do even better than last year, and make it further in state playoffs. “I know that there’s a lot of teams that are trying to beat us, and that is going to push us to strive better and work things out better so we can get to that same position,” senior point guard Aileen Gonzalez said.
The team has carried over that success to league, where they are 2-2 in the Gabilan Division through 4 games.
However, the team took an even bigger hit in the loss to Salinas when they lost Gil-Silva to a tibial tubercle fracture. “At that moment I was just hoping it was just a minor injury, but I knew in my head it wasn’t…I was on the court and I just knew I really had to step up,” Annis said. According to Athletic Director Jose Gil (Nayeli’s father), Gil-Silva will be out for 4-6 weeks, if the injury heals properly.
