SOQUEL >> When her girls basketball coach introduced daily activities to help with team bonding, Soquel High junior guard Sophie Hannah expected to learn more about her teammates.
She also learned something about herself. Like maybe she needs to make better use of the gas pedal.
“Most likely to get a ticket for driving too slowly on the freeway — I got that one,” she said. “I don’t know. Most of them haven’t even seen me drive!”
All kinds of revelations have been made this season on the Knights’ practice court and in Hannah’s living room, where the team occasionally gathers for Sunday game nights. The players now know who would be the best to take to trivia night and who has the most presidential potential. They also can point to the girl who is best at “stealing the bacon” — to name just one of the games they played in practice — and, perhaps most importantly, who would survive the zombie apocalypse.
That kind of information may seem, well, trivial, but coach Kanani Thomas said it serves as the crux of her master plan to bring Soquel its first league title in four years and, she hopes, its first Central Coast Section championship in her tenure. So far, it’s working out just how she drew it up.
After taking just one loss on their way to winning the Santa Cruz Coast Athletic League title, the Knights (21-5) now stand one win away from the CCS Division III championship game. If Soquel, the No. 2 seed, can take down No. 6 Sobrato (22-4) on Wednesday in their semifinal at Mills High, the Knights will advance to their first section title game since 2012. That’s the year the long-competitive program won its first CCS title, in D-IV under then-coach John Wilson.
Thomas, who took over the program from Wilson in the 2013-14 season, became inspired to try something new over the summer while working with T.J. Rosene, the head men’s basketball coach at Emmanuel College.
“Teams with great chemistry have a tendency to overachieve,” she said, quoting Rosene’s philosophy, “while teams with bad chemistry have a tendency to underachieve.”
Thomas put that to the test on the first day of practice, instituting daily, player-led bonding exercises. The daily themes included:
• My Commitment Monday — when each player announces what she’s committed to achieve that week
• Teammate Tuesday — fun activities involving teamwork
• Wisdom Wednesday — a time to share inspirational quotes and messages
• Thankful Thursday — each player says aloud something for which she is grateful
• Friday Funday — any kind of fun activity, from the aforementioned “steal the bacon” to soccer to bowling.
Thomas texts the players the schedule and the players responsible for each day, and then mostly gives them free rein.
“I remember her saying we’re going to do something new this year. Every day there’s a different theme and there’s going to be a different leader each day,” said senior Michaela Thornton. “I thought it would be really fun and it has been. It’s different. I’ve never done anything with a team like that before.”
Perhaps most surprising about Thomas’ decision to stress team-building this season, though, is the timing. The Knights only lost two players to graduation and many of them have been competing together since grade school.
Yet, through the process they say they’ve learned how little they know about each other.
“In the beginning, it may have been more for trust. Now it’s for communicating more with each other,” Hannah said. “We do get to know each other more personally. And we can just kind of have fun with it.”
The players’ ability to communicate got a hefty test in Soquel’s final week of the regular season. The Knights were just one win away from an undefeated SCCAL season, with rival Aptos — which is also competing in the D-III semifinals Wednesday — in the way. Yet the pressure of the flawless record and the emotions of senior night, combined with a hungry and talented opponent to spell disaster for Soquel. The Knights made a sluggish start and, despite a furious late rally, never really challenged for the win.
Afterward, in a long session in the team room, the players shared their game critiques, which at times included pointing out the flaws in each other’s games.
“We take each other up on that coaching,” Hannah said. “If we didn’t have that strong structure, any sort of coaching (from teammates) could have been destructive, but we took it as constructive criticism and as something we can work on next time.”
Those aren’t just words. The proof can be found in the Knights’ runaway SCCAL Tournament championship win over the Mariners a little more than a week later, when Soquel looked like a totally different, totally dominant team.
That’s the team Thomas wants to see in the CCS playoffs. After all that talk, it’s time to put the pedal to the metal.
“It takes a special group of girls to buy into that culture and process,” Thomas said. “They’ve bought into it, and it’s been awesome.”
Contact Sports Editor Julie Jag at 831-706-3257.
