Keeping cool, calm and collected before a game, the varsity Girls Basketball team lets us know on November 28 how they feel on and off the court while intensely battling their first game of the 2023 season against Arroyo Grande Eagles.
Off the court, Senior Leila Barela (#22), while observing the JV game said, “I’m pretty relaxed. I don’t think they’re intimidating. It’s just a good way to start the season because they’re good and we’re good. It gets us pumped.” Leila is a shooting guard and has been playing for 8 years.
Freshman Tori Holbrook (#32) said, “Knowing they’re good and experienced, gives me a rushing pressure to play hard.”
Tori is a freshman on Varsity and starts as a 5 center on the court.
Family and friends see the 10 minute half-time clock runs out and the score is sitting at 6-26. The team is unshaken by the score. They come out of their break feeling more collected and concentrated about their next quarter against the Eagles. After half-time, the Bearcats come out of a room with a more focused atmosphere than the first two quarters. Their impression gives the crowd a sense of anticipation for a possible turn on Arroyo Grandes 20 point lead in the upcoming 3rd quarter.
“After halftime, the whole team realized that we really needed to play with more intent, picking up on the little mistakes we were making, said Senior Marlie Thompson (#34), who is in her first year of Varsity on basketball as a power forward this season.
“After halftime, the team as a whole were all getting down on themselves. We just needed to regroup,” Barela said .
Barela and Thompson had both agreed that they felt that the atmosphere with the team was very intense and nerve wracking and that they needed the time to recollect themselves as a team and to go back out on the court feeling with communication.
The Bearcats were able to gain 12 more points on Arroyo Grande during the quarter. But the Eagles still ended up keeping the point gap, finishing the 4th quarter with a victory of 50 points.
After the match, their biggest take away for the Bearcat team was communication on the court, and on the sidelines.
“I definitely think that there were some points where we could have worked more on communication in the first 2 quarters. Overall, I think we played pretty good,” said Holbrook.
While the luck was not in their favor, ending the match 18-50, Bearcats still came out of the game confident and encouraged to become better for the upcoming league season. The Bearcat team considered Arroyo Grande to be worthy competition for their first game. The Eagles are sitting at 1-1 in their league season making their comeback from a loss against Santa Marcos.
“We knew it was going to be a tough team. We know what to do to help ourselves improve so we are all just ready to go back to it at practices.” (Thompson).
