Perseverance Is Key For Pearl City Girls Soccer Team
By Jack Danilewicz
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Del.icio.usFor the Pearl City girls soccer team, the further along the post season goes, the more committed the Chargers remain to their own scheme. After all, if it isn’t broken, there’s no need to fix it.
“Perseverance,” Pearl City co-coach Frank Baumholtz III said of what it takes for the Chargers to make a spirited run in this week’s Meadow Gold Hawaii Girls’ State Soccer Championships. “It’s about having a game plan and sticking to it until the last second. You have to keep trying to do what you know you can do best. You can never waver on that.”
At state tournament time, it’s all about peaking at the right time, and the Chargers have looked in recent weeks like a team poised for a title run. Pearl City was to play for the Oahu Interscholastic Association championship on Saturday against West rival Kapolei, having lost only once during both the regular and post seasons. A 2-1 setback to Mililani on Dec. 19 was Pearl City’s only loss this year.
Balance has carried the Chargers (11-1-2) to date. Including its regular season encounters, 12 different members of the Pearl City team have scored at least once, with four Chargers - Megan Fuller (OIA leading 19 goals), Bethany Gallarde (11), Carisa Calpo (8) and Chloe Maeshiro (8) - having tallied eight or more times. Fuller had the game-winning goal in Pearl City’s win over Kalani last Wednesday in the OIA semifinals.
“If everyone is doing their job, it doesn’t matter who scores - we know the team is going to do well,” Baumhotz said. “If you’re relying on one person and that person has a bad day, it isn’t going to work. When you have five kids who can score goals, you have to play man-to-man against me, and I like our chances (when playing against man-to-man defense).”
In a year when the Chargers lost three players before the season even started, work ethic has seen Pearl City through, according to Baumholtz, who co-coaches the team with Tracee Kono.
“We still have a young team with two juniors and a sophomore as our forwards,” Baumholtz said. “They’ve just worked hard together and played better and better as a team. We’re at a point in the season now where as long as we keep playing together, we’ll do well.”
It remains to be seen if their battles in the ultra-competitive OIA this season will benefit or hinder the Chargers in the state tournament. Baumholtz cited the increase in the “physicality of the play” this season in OIA contests.
“We’ve taken a little bit of a beating,” he said. “All the teams have stepped it up (in terms of playing physical).”
A higher seeding for this week’s state tournament, which runs from Wednesday through Saturday at Waipio Peninsula Soccer Park, was at stake over the weekend when the Chargers met Kapolei, although Baumholtz stopped well short of calling the higher seed necessarily the most favorable seed.
“Eighty-five percent of the time, when you win the OIA (playoffs), you don’t do anything in the state (tournament),” mused Baumholtz, who was trying to lead Pearl City to its first OIA title since 2001. “Sometimes its better to not win it (the OIA) and get a better draw (for the state tournament). In the OIA, there’s not much difference between the No. 1 and No. 6. It will be interesting to see how they (the state tournament selection committee) break six OIA teams into four brackets. You could have two OIA teams playing each other in a first-round tournament game.”
Tournament pairings were to be announced over the weekend.
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