Malibu High squad earns CIF playoff berth despite wildfire setbacks
The Malibu High Sharks girls soccer team had a handful of games scratched from their schedule due to wildfires. However, the squad capped their regular season with a dominant Senior Night victory and earned a CIF postseason berth.
Sharks senior captain Jess Kletter said she and her teammates wanted have a good time on the soccer field in the wake of the Malibu community experiencing the Franklin fire in December and Palisades fire last month.
“We wanted to enjoy our season and have fun,” she said. “We wanted to enjoy the experience. Everyone on the team is pretty resilient given what we went through.”
Sharks head coach Leado Shyrane is proud of the way his squad played.
‘Its been so tough for the girls,” he said. “The fires affected a lot of them. I wanted to normalize things as much as I could, make things positive, make things fun.”
Malibu defeated Nordoff 6-0 on Feb. 4 to close the regular season. The match was the setting for the team’s Senior Night celebration. Twelfth-grade team members Kletter, Caidyn Ovsiowitz, Lauren Florendo, Sailor Graham, Sasha Mendez, Malia Mosshart, and Payton Pollak were honored.
Shyrane said the seniors are a great group. “They are talented players,” he said. “They are good positive kids, who are great to coach.”
The Sharks played conservative soccer most of their abbreviated season since their schedule featured teams from biggerschools, but with the seven seniors set to play the majority of the match against Nordoff, Shyrane told the team they were taking the “hand brake off” before the match.
“It showed because we got the 6-0 victory,” he recalled. “The girls played well. We went all out and played with super intensity, high pressed. We finished on a high”
Kletter, Malibu’s top goal scorer this season, booted in three goals in the victory. Juniors Carmen Brunel and Ava Niccol and freshman Maya Elliot each kicked in one score.
Kletter’s “hat trick” occurred in different ways. She dribbled past defenders to maneuver inside the box to kick for one score. A pass from Graham led to Kletter netting another. Kletter’s third goal was a strike from just inside the box.
“As a senior, it was nice going out with a hat trick,” the 17-year-old said. “We played with a lot of energy in the second half.”
Four days after the win, the Sharks received an at-large bid into the CIF-Southern Section Girls Soccer Division 6 playoffs. Malibu faced the Segerstrom Jaguars in the first round on Feb. 12. The winner advanced to a second match against the victor of Carpinteria vs. St. Monica Prep on Friday, Feb. 14.
Shyrane said the Sharks wanted to play a cautious game against Segerstrom in the first portion of the contest since they are an unfamiliar opponent.
“Then, we’ll look to put our stamp on the game and take it to them,” he said.
Malibu began its campaign in November with the cleats aimed at putting a stamp on this season due to the number of experienced players and talented freshmen on the roster.
“I was confident,” Shyrane remembered. “I knew some of the girls coming in would be able to step up. I knew we were going to have a good season.”
The Sharks began the season with a 3-0 win over Villanova Prep, and after a loss to Santa Maria, they recorded a 2-0 victory over St. Bonaventure and 1-0 triumph over Heritage Christian on the second day of December. Their next game, a 3-1 loss to Tri-Valley League opponent Channel Islands on Dec. 6, was their last match for over a month due to the wildfires
The team had canceled matches and couldn’t practice. Their slate of 12 games against Tri-Valley League competition was slashed to six.
Malibu played five league games after the fires subsided. The Sharks had a 1-0 victory over Santa Paula on Jan. 24.
“We got the win and everyone was super happy about that,” said Kletter, who scored Malibu’s goal in the win.
The team then tied Carpinteria 0-0 three days later and Hueneme by the same score on Jan. 30. Both games went into double overtime. Malibu lost to Fillmore 4-1 on Jan. 31 and then beat Nordoff.
Malibu’s 2-2-2 league record qualified them for the playoffs.
The Shyrane said playing the league games last month with very little practice time was tough.
“However our record alone was decent form to make the playoffs,” the Sharks’ coach stated.
Kletter noted how the team rallied together.
“We wanted to finish the season and keep trying to win,” she said. “It would have been really easy to give up. We turned it around and gave it our best shot.”
