WATSONVILLE — Monserrat Hernandez Marquez was only 4 years old when she fell in love with the game of soccer.
The pint-sized star has the scars on her elbows and knees to prove it.
Born in Mexico City and living in the heart of the Hispanic country for the first four years of her life, Hernandez Marquez said she remembers diving on concrete to make saves on her older brother’s shots for hours on end.
“My knees and elbows would be all scratched up when we were done,” she said. “I didn’t care. I just wanted to play.”
With that infectious love for the game as her guiding light, Hernandez Marquez was the driving force behind Aptos High’s success over the last four seasons. An All-Santa Cruz Coast Athletic League First Team selection as a freshman, the league’s forward of the year her sophomore year and the SCCAL’s Most Valuable Player each of the last two seasons, Hernandez Marquez can now add another accomplishment to her long list.
The Mariners’ midfielder is our Player of the Year for girls soccer for the second consecutive season.
Hernandez Marquez helped Aptos win the SCCAL championship in each of the last four years, and lost only one league game over her high school career. She tallied a 44-1-3 league record in that time.
Aptos’s lone SCCAL loss with Hernandez Marquez on the roster came this winter. The Mariners dropped a 2-1 heartbreaker against Soquel High in their second match of the league season.
The loss snapped a 41-match unbeaten streak against SCCAL opponents, but it did not break their will.
The Mariners reeled off 10 straight victories, including nine shutouts, to return to the top of the league for the fifth consecutive time and advance to the prestigious Central Coast Section Open Division.
“This was the toughest one of the four to win,” Hernandez Marquez said about this year’s SCCAL title. “The league was really good this year.”
After the loss, Hernandez Marquez said she didn’t panic because it’s “not who I am.”
“I don’t like stressing about stuff I can’t control,” Hernandez Marquez said. “I try to maintain a positive attitude. I try to focus on the things I can control. We couldn’t go back and erase that loss, but we could move on and win the rest of them.”
Her composure and lead-by-example mentality, said Aptos head coach Jessica Perkin, was one of the main reasons why the Mariners were able to rally after the loss.
“The way she leads, it keeps everyone in the moment — one game at a time,” Perkin said earlier this season. “She doesn’t say a lot, but her teammates respect her. When she does talk, they listen.”
Dubbed “Mini Messi” by Perkin as a freshman, Hernandez Marquez has been called “magical” with the ball at her feet. Standing just 5-foot-2, she said she was always one of the smallest players on every team she’s ever played on, but has used her diminutive size to her advantage. She prides herself on her footwork and her short-area quickness, and learned from her brother Bryan — a CCS champion at Watsonville High a handful of years ago — how to create space in traffic by being crafty with her dribbles.
She scored 17 goals this season and also dished six assists — both team-highs. For her career, according to the stats kept on MBayPreps.com, Hernandez Marquez finished with 50 goals and 22 assists.
Hernandez Marquez also improved as a defender this season and was better at limiting the opposition’s opportunities in the middle. It wasn’t unusual for a rival team to finish a game with no shots on goal, because of her and her fellow midfielders’ brilliance.
“That’s where I really wanted to improve,” Hernandez Marquez said. “I realized it’s not just about the goals and assists. Those are nice, but you can affect the game in different ways with defense.”
Hernandez Marquez is set to play NCAA Division I soccer for Cal Poly-San Luis Obispo on scholarship in the fall. She said she plans to major in kinesiology, and hopes to be a physical trainer in the future after pursuing a professional career.
It will be what she called a “whole new start” to the next chapter of her life. The last chapter, she said, only happened because her parents, Karina Marquez and Javier Hernandez, decided to leave Mexico for greener pastures in the U.S. when she was 4.
A life in America and playing soccer were, she said, gifts given to her by her parents, which she in turn turned into a free education.
“This is what they sacrificed for,” Hernandez Marquez said. “It’s nice to see their sacrifice pay off like this. I tried to make them proud.”
COACH OF THE YEAR
• Jessica Perkin, Aptos — Aptos won its fifth straight SCCAL title and advanced to the CCS Open Division for the third straight season. This year’s 13-4-2 overall finish was also the fifth consecutive time the program as finished with double-digit wins.
The All-R-P Girls Soccer Team
Forwards
Jasmin Castillo >> Pajaro Valley, Fr.
Kailey Morrell >> M.V.C., Jr.
Midfielders
Monserrat Hernandez Marquez >> Aptos, Sr.
Paige Dueck >> Aptos, Sr.
Clare Tershy >> St. Francis, Sr.
Olivia Meier >> Aptos, Jr.
Defenders
Grace Rothman >> Aptos, Sr.
Analee Robledo >> Watsonville, Sr.
Katie Farley >> St. Francis, Sr.
Marcella Gudiel >> N.M.C., Sr.
Keepers
Syerra Montes >> M.V.C., Sr.
Caroline Miller >> Aptos, Jr.
Subs
Haley Veldhuis >> Aptos, Jr.
Maya Pruett >> Aptos, Sr.
