The dress rehearsal stage of the 2024-25 season is over for the Aptos girls’ soccer team.
After further review, most of the critics would probably agree they are lined up to be one of the premiere squads in the Central Coast Section.
The Mariners are coming off last week’s 5-2 win over Mountain View—the CCS Division II runner up—and a crushing 6-0 victory against Christopher in non-league action Tuesday.
It was a nice way to bounce back following back-to-back losses to Hollister and Los Gatos—the defending CCS D-III champion—just a week prior.
“The truth is when you get to CCS, that’s what it looks like,” Aptos coach Gina Castañeda said. “It’s gonna be fast, it’s gonna be aggressive. The girls have to know and understand what that looks like now so that if really that’s what our goal is as a team, then we get focused when it’s time to.”
Castañeda returns for a fourth year at helm. Since taking over the program, she’s led the program to a pair of Santa Cruz Coast Athletic League titles in 2022-23 and ‘23-24.
The Mariners took two defeats but Castañeda said they didn’t have their true starting 11 on those days. One of those players was junior and co-team captain Alexa Castañeda, who was out with an injury where they thought she broke her foot.
“When you have those starting 11 players it looks different,” Gina Castañeda said. “And we’re firing on all cylinders, it’s not one player on this team. You can give the ball to any of those 11 players and they are so good.”
Castañeda said there’s a strong sense of determination in this year’s group, which opted not to take any time off during the holliday break. She added that players are taking the soccer tactical information the coaches are giving out and exploiting opponents on the field.
The Mariners also brought in assistant coach Christian Diaz, a former Watsonville High soccer player and 2010 alumnus, to help with fitness, agility and speed.
“It’s great to have him here because the girls always complained last year when I tried to make them do it,” Castañeda said. “We’re the yin and yang here.”
Aptos finished the 2023-24 season with a 15-3-3 overall record, and won the SCCAL title for a second consecutive year.
However, it was the same old song aHowever, it was the same old song and dance after getting eliminated in the quarterfinals of the CCS playoffs for a fifth straight year. Aptos, which earned the No. 7 seed in the D-II bracket, lost to No. 2 Leland in a penalty kick shootout.
They also lost key players in Ava Churchill, Kaitlyn Murphy, Angelique Nuñez, Ella Shoemaker and Peyton Westjohn due to graduation.
This season’s senior class is led by Bianca Alvarez, Isabelle Graff and co-team captain Anahi Macias, who believes they still have a strong group even with a new lineup and core of newly arrived players.
“We’re getting better playing together, and we’re just building up that chemistry, and it’s pretty good now,” Macias said.
Castañeda and fellow co-captain Izzie Schenone along with Anahi Najera, Aoife Gordan, Ava Chekouras, Bella Dolittle, Emma Ingram, Madison Redding, Isla Gomez, Jordan Brown and goalkeeper Evelyn Pini make up the rest of upperclassmen on what is a junior-heavy Mariners team this season.
Alexa Castañeda, who has a team-best five assists along with a pair of goals this season, said they’ve maintained a good job of sticking together and being more present despite losing a large chunk of last season’s squad.
“We lost a lot of seniors and the freshmen are filling in those shoes. I feel they’ve kind of done a good job of that,” she said.
A pair of those freshmen include Gigi Zuñiga and Emilie Santiago, who have two and three goals, respectively, this season.
Santiago had a pair of goals in last week’s win over Mountain View, and Zuñiga notched one goal and had one assist in Tuesday’s win against Christopher.
Macias said the new players are highly technical and they keep up with the speed of play.
“They’re just overall great players,” she said.
Other underclassmen stepping up include sophomores Kenzie Culbertson, Aubrie Ford, Isabella Hartnett and Scarlett Statler, who is taking on a bigger role in the midfield.
“[Stateler] is just dynamic, she’s strong, she’s aggressive, she’s fast and she understands the game,” Castañeda said. “She puts in a lot of work.”
Hartnett scored twice on Tuesday to give her a team-best five goals, while Stateler recorded her fourth goal and fourth assist this season.
Macias added that one of their biggest focal points this season is communicating and getting the freshmen to be more inclusive in order to build that chemistry from the get-go.
Part of donning the honorary team captain badge is to make sure those things happen on the pitch. However, Macias believes the younger players are already doing an amazing job of staying on pace with the veterans.
“Just because we’re wearing the badge doesn’t mean that we’re the only ones that step up,” she said. “We’re just here to encourage them and help them continue. Most of us are upperclassmen…we’re just there to mentor and kind of help them build them up.”
Aptos currently owns a 4-2 overall record and seems to be heading in the right direction following another strong performance in non-league play. They also seem to be on track, and current favorites, to win the SCCAL crown for a third straight year.
“We’re not going to come in super confident or complacent,” Castañeda said. “We need to show up to every game knowing that teams are going to play us their hardest because they want to be able to win the league.”
They will face familiar challengers in Harbor, Santa Cruz, San Lorenzo Valley, Scotts Valley and Soquel for a shot at the league title.
Macias has no doubt other teams are aiming to down Aptos, especially because she believes they are the team to beat once again.
“They’re gonna want to come for us, but we’re ready,” she said. “And we’ve been getting ready with pretty good schools we’ve been playing, I think we’re ready for league.”
A third league title would be nice. Yet, the ultimate goal this season for Castañeda and her teammates is to finally get over the hump in the CCS playoffs, and bring home a section title for the first time in the program’s history.
“I think we’ve always been able to win,” Castañeda said. “We just beat up ourselves mentally, and I think we can overcome that this year.”
Aptos hosts Santa Teresa in non-league action on Saturday at noon, followed by its SCCAL opener at home against Scotts Valley (3-2-3) on Jan. 14 at 7pm.
