Varsity Girls Basketball, Boys Basketball and Girls Soccer all qualified in their respective divisions of the Central Coast Section playoffs by maintaining a consistent level of gameplay throughout the entire Winter season. CCS playoffs are the first level of postseason competition for interscholastic programs throughout the south Bay Area.
Both Girls Basketball and Boys Basketball are in the De Anza Division of the Santa Clara Valley Athletic League. Because this division is considered an ‘A league,’ or the higher rated of the two leagues, CCS qualification requires a 0.500 win rate in either non-league or league games. Due to the competitiveness of the De Anza Division, Varsity Girls Basketball freshman Rishika Kothari cites the numerous non-league games teams play by going to various tournaments hosted by other high schools, in order to solidify their qualification and meet the 0.500 win rate.
“The main reason we made CCS was because our pre-season record was high,” Kothari said. “Towards the end of the season, we built up some momentum and were playing well, and that’s one of the big reasons we made it.”
Girls Soccer, however, had to take an alternate path to the playoffs. As competitors in the El Camino Division, the ‘B league’, a team must typically win the league title outright to qualify. If they don’t, they must apply for an at-large bid, also known as an invitational bid, to achieve a selection-based place in the playoffs, based on a complex point system that generally favors teams that have a winning percentage of 0.500 or higher. Despite not finishing first, Varsity Girls Soccer sophomore Marissa Chang explains how MVHS had its at-large bid accepted because of their strong non-league record and performance against high-level teams.
“In preseason, we played a lot of higher-level teams,” Chang said. “Even just tying with a higher-level team is worth the same as winning in the El Camino League. When we beat or tied some of them, we got more points than the second-place team in the league.”
Because the CCS qualification process emphasizes consistent gameplay throughout the entire season, teams used various strategies to maintain a high level of competition. According to Chang, the Girls Soccer team achieved this by focusing on more details off the field. Their new Head Coach, Stephen Liu, implemented weekly film review for the team.
“Throughout the whole year — usually Thursdays or rainy days — we did film,” Chang said. “That helped us point out what we did wrong or what we need to work on in games or in the next practice, and that really helped us improve.”
Similarly, Kothari says that the Girls Basketball team emphasized a bid to CCS from the start of the season. She says that the goal brought the team together and created motivation among the team to work hard throughout the season despite setbacks.
“We were having a really bad practice and Coach Borelli said to talk it out,” Kothari said. “We had this big talk for 20 minutes, like ‘what is our goal, what do we want to do?’ We said we wanted to win CCS. When we went back to practice, our energy was way harder, and it really contributed to us working harder because we wanted to achieve this big goal.”
In the Boys Basketball team, senior Kendrick Wong says that its actual journey through the Winter season was disrupted by multiple physical and mental setbacks. He notes that maintaining a positive team culture allowed them to work through a difficult season.
“Our chemistry was a really big part of it,” Wong said. “The amount of injuries and setbacks we’ve had really took a toll, so we had to persevere through it.”
Chang observed a similar need for adjustments during soccer. She attributes the team’s consistent performance to their ability to self-correct during important moments in games.
“Most of the time we didn’t get scored on that much, but when we did we would always huddle and talk about what we could improve on,” Chang said. “At halftime, we always have our own minutes to talk before our coach comes, and I think that really helped.”
With this being the Boys Basketball team’s first season back in the De Anza League, Wong said the hardest part of CCS qualification was creating a streak of winning games and peaking at the right time. Kothari agrees, stating that the largest challenge was standing out amongst strong competition with a young team that lacked comparable depth.
“We played really high level competition, so winning games was difficult,” Kothari said. “We have a small and very young team — we only have 10 people and four of them are freshmen, so we had to learn how to play at a high school level since it was very different from middle school.”
Despite the challenging process, Chang says the opportunity to compete at CCS felt like a confirmation of their effort and performance. She claims that the bid represents a historic breakthrough for the team, marking its first qualification in 14 years.
“We were super excited, and we felt like we really accomplished something,” Chang said. “The whole season we were talking about CCS, but it was kind of towards the last two or three weeks that we were like ‘we need to win this game to get this many points,’ or ‘this team needs to win this game so we can get in.’”
