The 2021 La Quinta High School girls’ soccer team came into this new season with new goals.

Hailey Printz ‘22 talked about her senior season and some of the goals that she wanted to achieve her senior year.

“I wanted to play as a team and beat teams we didn’t last year,” she said. 

The main team she wanted to beat was Shadow Hills High School and they accomplished their goal but ended up tying the series 1-1. 

So did Iljiana Arbaugh ‘23 and she said some of the goals going into the year were to have a better year than last year. She also wanted to have a bigger impact on the team’s overall competitiveness in the Desert Empire League (DEL). 

“Going into league, I just wanted to compete with more teams than last year,” she said. 

She agreed that the main team she wanted to beat was Shadow Hills. Arbaugh and the Blackhawks came away with the win in one of the two-game series against Shadow Hills.

 Something Printz would like to see the team do better next year is playing as one team instead of playing for themselves.

 She thought that this year, there were times the team was more worried about themselves and not the team and the team agreed. 

She also said that although she is leaving next year, she would like to see the team have better communication skills: Talking on and off the field to be on the same page so no one is out of position. She thinks communication is a key skill that if the team builds off of, they will find more success.

“I felt like sometimes the communication just wasn’t there and I feel like if we talked more we could have won more games,” she said.

Tatum Plott ‘23 agreed with Printz in the sense that the communication wasn’t there at times. Plott’s main goal for next year is to stay as a team. She wants the team to play as one and have better team chemistry and morale. 

“Our team needs better communication and play as one team and not just 11 individuals,” she said.

Iliana Rivera ‘23 agreed with Plott. 

Rivera feels that the team would be more successful if the team was a team. Rivera also feels that the team needs to understand the game isn’t over until the time runs out and even if the team goes down by only one or two goals, they shouldn’t hang their heads and need to play to the end.

“When we go down we will hang our heads and we just need to finish strong,” she said.

Next year is going to be a big year for the Class of ‘23. For Arbaugh, she wants to end her senior season big by not only winning league but winning CIF as well.

Plott feels the same as Arbaugh, as she, too, wants to end her high school year by winning league and CIF.

“Obviously I would like to win league but I think going to CIF would be cool and winning it would be better,” Plott said.

Rivera also said that down the stretch of the season and it was getting close to the end everyone was losing fundamentals and not really in the game. Rivera said that staying fundamentally sound during the whole year is a big factor in winning.

There have been many common goals for the La Quinta Blackhawks next year. 

Many of the players said that they need to stay confident and not cocky, have better communication, better ball skills, take practice more seriously and other goals the team agrees on. 

When the team was saying their goals, it looked like the team had one, solid, main goal — keeping in mind how to accomplish those goals as well. 

What was really amazing is that everyone said the same thing and it was to win league and win CIF. 

“Next year is our year,” she said.