On Tuesday, Feb. 18, 2025, the Cupertino girls varsity soccer team played their last game of the season at home against Milpitas High School. Despite a 1-0 loss, they ended the season with an overall record of 11-9 — the most wins the program has had in a season in over 20 years.
The Cupertino High School girls soccer team has been unsuccessful in the past decades, struggling to win more than 10 wins in a season since the 2007-2008 season. That was 17 years ago, before many players on this season’s roster were even born.
Senior Sarah Lappalainen-Zhao has played on the girls varsity team for all four years of high school, serving as a co-captain for the past two years. She recalled how the previous year’s unsuccessful runs have affected her expectations of the team as a player.
Said Lappalainen-Zhao, “I feel like since freshman year, I’m sometimes like […], ‘We’re not that great, we’re probably just gonna lose this game.’ I want to win, but I have this expectation of the outcome.”
This year, the program defied expectations and saw an outstanding improvement compared to recent season records, jumping from last season’s three wins to now 11.
Senior Maya Ranjan played alongside Lappalainen-Zhao for all four years of her high school career, also serving as co-captain for two years. She recalls how successful games early on in the season positively impacted players’ attitudes.
“We realized that we actually were able to do it,” Ranjan said. “We had worked hard enough to grow from the team that we were last year. I think seeing that we could do it the first time just made us want to keep working harder and keep winning more games.”
This season, 15 of 23 players on the roster were seniors. Over the past four years playing together, the team has accumulated a “chemistry” which shined through in this season’s improvement.
Said Ranjan, “We got to know how everyone else plays and everyone else’s strengths and weaknesses, and that made us collectively better. And since we’ve been playing together for a couple years now, everyone trusts each other a lot more and we’re able to talk to each other a lot more.”
Additionally, Lappalainen-Zhao described a newfound passion stemming from the remarkable number of seniors on the team playing their final high school season.
“A lot of us were like, ‘We want to make this a good last season.’ […] I feel like we wanted to leave a lasting impact,” Lappalainen-Zhao said.
Lappalainen-Zhao also attributed much of the improvement this season to increased team bonding, incorporating underclassmen players into the seniors’ tight circle.
“We’ve been doing a lot of team bonding […] where we just go and hang out with each other after a game or after practice. So I feel like that also contributed to our improvement,” Lappalainen-Zhao said.
With the momentum of Cupertino High School’s girls soccer program shifting after this season’s outstanding performance, both Lappalainen-Zhao and Ranjan hope that the team will continue to succeed and improve.
Said Ranjan, “I hope that [the underclassmen] are able to improve as individual players as well, and hopefully some of them are able to grow into leaders and make the next season even better.”
