- Meet at Woodbridge this Saturday 12/26 at 3:45pm, depart by 4:00pm
- We are flying out of LAX on Frontier Airlines
- Outbound flight #1180 at 8:50PM Dec.26th
- First game will be Monday 12/28 at 9:00am vs West Islip HS (NY)
- All games will be held at the ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex
- The bracket is now posted in the tournament section of the web site.
- Return flight #1181 arrives at LAX at 7:35PM 1/1/16
Woodbridge High’s girls basketball team returns two starters from last year’s team that was 20-8 overall, but the lack of overall experience is a concern for Coach Eric Bangs.
Woodbridge was 8-2, sharing the Pacific Coast League title with Corona del Mar.
The Warriors are led by two players who were second team all-league last year, senior Sierra Vaglica and sophomore Anjali Ghadi. Junior Lauren Lum, who was honorable mention last year, is also expected to make big contributions.
The Warriors started out the season with 10 players. But junior Alyssa Cadavona, who was expected to start, was helped off the court following an injury in Saturday’s third place game of the South Coast Classic and her status for the future was not know.
“Alyssa Cadavona had never played at all and she started to figure it out,” Bangs said after the game. “Hopefully, she’s not hurt too bad.”
The other starter is junior Lauren Baffo.
While the Warriors have experience, they don’t have a lot of depth.
“This year’s varsity team is not as deep as the last few years with only 10 members on the team,” Bangs said. “We actually have 11 players, but two-year letter-winner Alissa Niewiadomski (second team all-league) suffered an ACL injury in July and will not be able to play her senior year.
“The team has a couple of returners with experience, but there are also several girls playing their first year on varsity. If the team can stay healthy this year, it looks like all of the girls will be playing significant minutes, led by returners Sierra Vaglica, Lauren Lum and Anjali Ghadi.”
A number of other players are expected to contribute, including sophomore Tessa Shimizu, junior Abby Montplaisir, sophomore Sanarya Salem and junior Heather Fujii.
Bangs hopes the ingredients are there for another winning season, but acknowledges there are question marks.
“We’re really young and green,” he said. “We just try and get better every day. We are the least experienced team in the league.
“Lum and Vaglica have experience. Ghadi is a second year player. Baffo and Cadavona are first year starters with no experience.”
Bangs believes there will be plenty of challenges in the Pacific Coast League.
“CdM, Beckman, Northwood and Uni are all pretty good,” Bangs said. “I don’t know anything about Irvine.”
Woodbridge hosts Sonora at 7 p.m. Friday before competing in the Segerstrom Tournament next week