West LA Tourney

DEVIN MALONE Reporter @roundupnews

The Brahmas are getting prepared for the upcoming West L.A. Tournament after their win against Oxnard College on Nov. 20. The other colleges participating are Glendale, Compton, LA Valley, Santa Ana, Long Beach and Barstow.

During the tournament, the Brahmas will be competing against Glendale in the first game.

Casey Weitzel, head coach, had a match with Glendale, with the Brahmas walking away with the win by a score of 77-70.

“We’ve already played them,” Weitzel said. “That was the game that was originally supposed to be here for the home opener, but because of the fire shelter being here we had to move that back to Glendale.”

The Brahmas practice for each game, and the coaches may gather information by watching their competitors games prior to playing them.

Ely Cohen, a shooting guard for the Brahmas, says that team practises using information they’ve learned from their coaches after they’ve scouted their opponents.

“Depending on what team we

Season Review:

Brahmas soccer

EZZAT WANAS Reporter @EzzatWanas

Salonga’s newly-found ambition has led her to take on two jobs where she works approximately 33 hours a week. She is a server at Olive Garden and a manager at Taco Bell. She is currently enrolled in Calculus 2, Chemistry, and a Chemistry lab. Including soccer, that equates to fourteen credits.

Salonga is pulling off this balancing act all while being one of three captains on the team and maintaining a cumulative 4.0 GPA.

Salonga uses her mentality that she adopted from sports into real life. She is determined to get good grades and make as much money as possible.

“I see some athletic tendencies in everything I do,” Salonga said. “It’s almost like I have to do this and I don’t have a choice. It’s the competitive side of me. I want to have a lot of money when I am older and that’s the goal.”

Adolfo Perez, head coach, believes its Salonga’s leadership qualities that stand out about her and it’s the reason why she is a captain on the team.

“It’s not always your best players, it’s the leaders,” Perez said. “She is super organized which helps us tremendously.”

Perez said that Salonga acts as the play, Coach Casey, Coach Bruce [English] and Coach Charles [White] do a great job at scouting the other teams and watching their games,” Cohen said. “Many, many games, not just one or two like most normal college coaches would. Like eight to ten games, so we really know what the other team runs and their plays.”

Weitzel said this technique, and stated the team employs the other team’s actions into their own practice as a means of familiarizing themselves with how the opponents play.

“What we do kind of stays the same, but how we do it might change,” Weitzel said. “So if a team runs a certain series of actions, we’ll add those actions into our regular practice, because we have that built in. A period of time in practice to work on specific actions that we will see.”

Mohamed Sako, forward, believes that the team has been working to see their efforts pay off.

“I’m excited and this year our whole goal is to play in the championship,” Sako said. “We have been working hard these past couple of weeks and months and we’d really like to just go there and win a lot of games this year. That’s a promise.”

Weitzel mentioned the challenges the team had so far.

“Really our biggest obstacles would be the short turnarounds on these games,” Weitzel said. “You’re prepared for the first one, but then you don’t know who you’ll play until the result of the game after or before you. So then as soon as you finish your game you prepare for the next game and getting in your gym can be hard. Our gym floor will be getting done during that tournament, which is great because we need it, but at the same time we can’t come in and do perfect role model for the other girls on the team and exemplifies what a student athlete should be.

“I fully respect people that do what she does because it is not easy,” Perez said. “I know someone with her work ethic definitely has a bright future.”

Jocelyn Ramos, midfielder, and one of Salonga’s best friends, said that her hard work is contagious and it helps inspire the rest of the team to have a better work ethic.

“She’s really our motivation,” Ramos said. “It makes each and every one of us work hard because we don’t have as difficult of a life as she does. There’s no excuse for us to slack off if she’s not.”

Along with leadership, Ramos said that she is also one of the nicest people on the team and she treats everyone with kindness and compassion.

“She’s really down to earth and really positive,” Ramos said. “She’s really the light of the whole team and she brings us all together.”

Salonga said that other than success, her main motivation in life are her parents because they both work incredibly hard to support her and her brother.

“I think the reason why I work so hard is because I want to do the same thing for my kids and do even more but not have the slightest bit of worry about money,” Salonga said.

Despite going through adversity and living a very busy life with not much time for herself, there are three simple words that Salonga constantly repeats to herself every day. Whatever It Takes. “It’s whatever it takes whether it’s in school, in life, or in a game,” Salonga said. “I want to be a billionaire. I don’t know what I have to do but I am going to do whatever it takes to get there.” ctorres.roundupnews@gmail.com

After Pierce, Salonga plans on applying to transfer to San Diego State University, University of California, San Diego or University of California, Los Angeles. She is currently undecided on her major but is considering aerospace or mechanical engineering and nursing.

Salonga has no plans on playing wherever she transfers and confirmed that this is her last season being a student athlete.

“I definitely love the sport, but I think ending now is perfect for me and I would be happy,” Salonga said.

The soccer team concluded the 2018 season with an 18th straight playoff appearance, despite having a year full of ups and downs.

The Brahmas lost to the Cerritos College Falcons in the first round of the regionals.

Head coach Adolfo Perez said the players never gave up.

“Our girls here at Pierce played that hard, played that good, I am so proud of them,” Perez said.

The Brahmas ended with an overall record of 13-6-3, while finishing second in conference play at 5-2-1.

The team scored a total of 74 goals, at 3.36 per game. They had 186 shots on goal and a total of 80 assists.

Perez said that the team faced a lot of obstacles and a lot of injuries.

For example, the team began the season with four goalkeepers and end up with only one.

Madison Holland went out for the season due to a torn ACL. Midfielder Irene Reyes had the same injury.

Iliana Yanez suffered a concussion in the game against Santa Monica College and Valerie Mojica suffered an injury around the lower part of her leg.

From the beginning of the season, Perez was worried about injuries.

“My most successful years, like 2002, 2005, and 2010 we didn’t have a lot of injuries, so there is a correlation between injuries and performance. You have no control over injuries and this year we had a lot of injuries,” Perez said.

Keyonna Hill led the team with 29 goals. She tied the all-time goalscorer who was Erica Vangsness.

“I would really like to thank Coach Adolfo Perez for being a strong amazing coach. After two years of not playing he was able to help shape and guide me. Special thanks to Coach Willie [Diaz] because of you I never quit no matter how,” Hill said.

Diana Millan led the team and the state with 29 assists.

One of the highlights this season was coming back from three goals down to beat Ventura College 4-3.

Diana Salonga, midfielder, said that the team did very well this season.

“We have a good record, every girl played hard, we got a lot of goals everywhere we played,” Salonga said.

The Brahmas fell short of another conference title finishing second behind Santa Monica.

In the Play-In Game of regionals Pierce faced their cross-town rival LA Valley College.

Gisell Cruz scored the only goal for the team which helped the team advance to the next round.

In the next round, they faced Cerritos and lost 4-0.

“We actually played the best game. In my 18 years I never seen a game plays like Cerritos, they won 21 games and scored 128 goals, but our team played the best game,” Perez said.

[For the full story visit theroundupnews.com] a shoot up round to prepare for the other team.”

Regardless of these setback, Weitzel and Brahmas are looking forward to the tournament as they see it as a chance to better themselves on the court.

“I think every day that this team has gotten together, their focus has been to get better,” Weitzel said. “So what I’m looking forward to is seeing them get better every game, and they have. So each time we go out, we prepare a little bit better, we compete a little bit better, we execute a little bit better and we just keep getting closer and closer to putting a complete game together. So I’m going to be really excited to see if maybe this weekend would be a chance to see that complete game.” The tournament takes place from Nov. 29 to Dec.1.