By Nana Horii | Staff Writer
On Dec. 15, the Gabrielino High School girls basketball team played an away game against Marshall Fundamental Secondary High School in their first league game of the season. Scores were not available at press time.
The girls basketball team has played against Marshall many times over the years, and the opposing team has only gotten stronger during that time.
“I expect the game to be competitive and there to be, hopefully, emotions which always drive the competition.” Head coach and Government/Economics teacher Desiree Almaraz stated. “I’m looking forward to the game.”
On Dec. 6th, the team played a non-league away game against Ontario High School, winning 61-30. Though the team took an early lead at the beginning of the game, they had difficulty scoring points in the third quarter. In the fourth quarter, they started to make more of their shots which brought the final score to 61 points.
Player Rachel Liu, a senior at Gabrielino, also made a three pointer in the fourth quarter.
On Dec. 2, the Eagles won a non-league away game against San Gabriel High School, 62-16. Gabrielino established an early lead and maintained it all throughout the game.
On Nov. 27, the team won a tournament game against Yorba Linda, 42-28.
The day before that, Gabrielino took down Whittier Christian High School, 53-21.
“Toward the end, they began making all their shots but at the beginning they couldn’t make anything so it wasn’t that hard of a game for us.” Liu stated.
Three days before that, the team went up against Victor Valley in a tournament game, which had been a very dominant team in past tournaments. The Eagles kept it close but were ultimately defeated, 35-39.
Player Kyra Yoshitani had a positive attitude about the defeat.
“The teams we played were in a higher division than us so we didn’t feel completely defeated.” she stated. “Just seeing that we had potential to beat them and the fact they were two divisions higher than us definitely showed how we’d been able to improve.”
On Nov. 23, Gabrielino played against Sonora High School in a tournament game. Sonora had been successful in prior tournaments. The Eagles lost 37-52.
“We can control our energy, our efforts, and out attitudes.” Almaraz stated. “When we control these things we control the outcome of the game and usually that turns into positive results.”
Almaraz noted that in this game, the team failed to control these things, “not checking their attitude, their effort not being great, and motivation being down” due to the flow of the match. These three factors became topics of discussion for later games.
On Nov. 12, the team played against Montebello High School. Gabrielino won, 66-15.
