Following last year’s 21-1-3 season that ended with the team’s first-ever CIF Championship, the Malibu High School varsity girls’ soccer team has begun practicing for its upcoming season.
Despite the loss of five senior starters from last year’s team-a group that included Claire Haft and Caysie Beetley, who were the Sharks’ second and third leading scorers-the team remains confident in its returning players as well as with the number of newcomers. Freshmen additions include Jane Sidley, Elena Clairefield, sophomore Annie Thacker and junior Carleigh Madden.
“A lot of the new girls are pretty good,” senior starter Claire Kiefer said. “So far, everyone is catching along to how coaches like to run things, as well as their different strategies and techniques.”
While the Sharks have received a good amount of new talent this year, the team returns with plenty of strong players from last year’s championship lineup. This year, the girls will rely on seniors Kiefer, Gigi Wooler and Ashtin Miller, as well as juniors Kristiana Konkol (who led the team in goals last season and scored all the Sharks’ goals in its 3-2 championship win over Desert Christian), Maddie Clarfield, Paige Stoker and Coral Silverberg to lead the team.
A major obstacle to the team’s pursuit of another championship this year is the fact that they have been moved from Division 6 to Division 4, and now play in the Tri-Valley League instead of the Frontier League. Thus, they will face much stiffer competition from such as defending league champions Oaks Christian, Oak Park, Nordhoff, La Reina and Saint Bonaventure. With the jump in the competition level for this year’s team, the girls realize that they will have to work even harder than last year in order to be as successful.
“We saw how hard we had to work last year to win CIF,” Kiefer said. “If we are to win CIF again, we will have to work a lot harder because we are in a higher division and have more new people who are still getting used to our system.”
The team is entering its third week of practice, as the coaching staff, headed by coach John Johnstone, will begin to make tough decisions as to who will play on varsity and who will play on JV. While practices serve as a good tool for doing so, performances during the team’s early scrimmages will be a deciding factor in who will make the cut. The varsity team, which won its first game against Archer last Monday, will have a number of pre-season games before the league schedule begins against La Reina following Malibu High School’s winter break.