Looking to improve on last year’s second place finish the girls’ varsity basketball team set out to win a league title. However, after losing the two top scorers, they had their work cut out for them. Senior captain Rocio Becerra said that the losses of leading scorers Natalia Castro and Brittany Valdez made things difficult. “When Brit and Natalia left, it really hurt us. We knew someone was going to have to step it up.”

As important as it was to find new scorers, that was the least of Coach Mick Battaglini’s worries at the beginning of the season. “We didn’t even have 10 people for almost the whole first month,” he said. “We had some players who decided they didn’t want to play this year and so we had move up some younger players sooner than I would’ve liked to.”

The team’s biggest transition was learning to rely on each other. As Battaglini stated, “Last year we had two people who were the stars and other teams knew that they had to stop those to keep us from winning, and this year it was a little different because it was more scoring by committee. Everyone contributed at different times.”

The team went 6-6 in the preseason and won their tournament, The Alisal Winter Jam, for the second year in a row. “That was the highlight of the preseason,” said Battaglini.

League got off to a rough start with a loss to Alvarez, but the Lady Trojans bounced back on their way to a 8-4 third place finish. “We flirted with a league championship (the team was tied for first place twice), and we could have earned a share of the title with a victory over Notre Dame in the second round, but we came up short,” said Battaglini.

The team qualified for the CCS playoffs for the second year in a row, this time against Monta Vista of Cupertino. Unfortunately, the playoff run was short-lived, and the team fell 40-27. “We got behind early and we couldn’t come back,” said Battaglini, “although we did have a strong second half.”

After the game, Battaglini told the team it was his last game. “I had been thinking about it for a while,” he said, “and it seemed like the right time.” The timing, at least in part, had to do with his JV coach, Bruce Powers, deciding to retire. “We came in together, and I thought it was fitting for us to go out together,” he said.  Battaglini and Powers had coached 22 years together, helping to lead the Lady Trojans to two league titles, in 1997 and 2005, and making the program competitive. “When I took over, the program was not competitive,” said Battaglini. “Our goal was to change the culture and expectations, and we accomplished that.”