BADMINTON

The badminton team has had a very successful season so far, with a current record of 4-0. They have beaten Mountain View, Fremont, Santa Clara and Homestead high schools.

“We want to maintain this record and make it back up to the upper division, where we were last year,” captain senior Alina Chen said. “We’re working hard on training JV because we have a lot of seniors leaving this year.”

The team is working on getting its new players accustomed to the game. They are working on using strategies in matches as opposed to hitting the shuttlecock randomly to the opposing side of the net.

“I’m feeling pretty confident about this season,” Alina said. “Looking at other school’s records, there are only a couple of teams that we’re going to have a tight competition with, but we’re training and practicing a lot, so I think we’ll be fine.”

SOFTBALL

The Los Altos softball team’s league score is currently 11-7. Playing in the De Anza league for the second year, the team has high hopes for the season.

“Our goal was to not only make it to CCS, but to take the league title even though it was projected for us to take second, behind Wilcox,” captain senior Amanda Jones said. “We ended up winning our first game against Wilcox, and that shut up a lot of people who doubted our team. We still have many league games to go, but I am confident we will take leagues.”

This year, the team is working on their “timely hit.” Often, the team will get runners on base in a scoring position, but will not be able to deliver with the “timely hit” and get the runs in. This has resulted in the loss of many 1-run games.

“I have great faith that we will take first in league, but no matter what happens in league, our goal is to take CCS,” Amanda said. “For the last three years, we have made first, second, and third round respectively, so this year is our year to take it all.”

TRACK AND FIELD

Due to a lack of participants and injuries plaguing all sections of the Los Altos Track and Field team, the Eagles are currently trying to bounce back from a tough start and finish the season strong.

The varsity boys are 2-3 in meets, varsity girls are 0-3, Frosh/Soph boys are 1-3 and JV girls are 0-3.

On Wednesday, April 23, both divisions of the boys teams were able to defeat previously undefeated Gunn. The girls turned in a strong performance, but the team has so few participants it is hard for them to score enough points for a victory.

Injuries on the team hampered their performance as one of the top runners, sophomore Amanda Mell, was not able to compete.

Currently, senior Kelly McConnell is ranked as the fourth best 400 meter hurdle runner in all of California.

TENNIS

The Eagles’ league record is currently 7-4 after a 6-1 win over Gunn.

Los Altos started off the season with a 3-0 streak, but slowed down afterwards, losing two consecutive matches to Monta Vista, which ended 4-3 respectively. After the Monta Vista matches, the Eagles progressed and were able to notch off big team wins until facing Saratoga.

Saratoga handed the Eagles its only other two losses of the season. In between the matches against the Saratoga Falcons, Los Altos was able to defeat Lynbrook and Cupertino. After their last loss to Saratoga, the Eagles came back strong and defeated Gunn in a dominating fashion.

The Eagles look to continue their solid play as they take on both Palo Alto and Lynbrook in upcoming matches.

GYMNASTICS

Gymnastics had its first league meet on Friday, April 18. Varsity placed first, while JV placed second. Sophomore Sarah Callan finished third overall and freshman Sam Aguirre finished second overall for varsity.

The team has only three league meets before league playoffs and CCS and needs to keep up a solid team score in order to qualify for CCS.

“As a team we really want to just do well in CCS,” sophomore Sarah Callan said. “I want to get a lot of my old skills back so that I can really compete with them.”

Sarah and Sam are both going through their first years on the Los Altos team. They have already proven themselves extremely capable as a strong foundation for the team in years to come.

Gymnastics competes in its fourth league meet on Wednesday, April 30.

DIVING

The diving teams sports a full roster with multiple athletes who have external experience, who have lent to the team’s successes this season. Standouts freshman Riley Fujioka and senior Austin Campitelli have led the team thus far, and look to contribute significantly in both league finals and CCS.

“Freshman diver Riley Fujioka has placed first in four of our five meets,” Coach Seth Tasman said. “Senior Austin Campitelli has been her runner up.”

As for future goals, the team is looking to come out strong in both CCS and the coming league finals, and go farther than the dive teams of years past, which struggled to place on the podium.

“We have a lot of strong talent and look forward to seeing how we do in league finals and CCS,” Tasman said.

LACROSSE

After losing to Mountain View High School on April 15, the boys’ Lacrosse team is more motivated than ever to win their league title and beat their rival Mountain View when they play them later in the season. Currently, the Lacrosse team’s record is 5-1, making them confident about the upcoming season.

“We’re kind of seen as the underdogs with all the upper league games, I don’t know if it’s a challenge, but a lot of those teams are better than us,” junior Riley Kahan said. “So a couple of our goals are to win, like to beat Mountain View is one of our goals.”

In addition, the team is working on improving the skills of the new players on the team, because they are going to lose a large amount of seniors in coming years.

“We want to try and better our new players as much as we can obviously, so that when we graduate our more experienced players we don’t have a loss,” Riley said.

Right now, the team is focusing on making it to the playoffs and winning their first playoff game.

“We kind of expected to do pretty well this season, and we are, and our chances of making it to the playoffs are good, but it could also not happen, so we have to work for it,” Riley said.

GOLF

The Los Altos Golf team is currently 4-5-2. After a loss to Cupertino, the Eagles have limited their chances of making the league tournament.

“We should have beaten Cupertino,” captain senior Spencer Katchman said, “Losing pretty much eliminated us from the tournament.”

However, many of the players on the team still have a chance of playing in the individual tournament. Seniors Spencer Katchman and Andrew Bray and sophomores Jack Dexter and Kevin Shea are all in a position to compete in the individual league tournament.

Overall, this season has been up and down. The Eagles lost a few close matches and tied a few that they should have won.

“We are a good team, we just under-performed,” Spencer said, “If we had played our best golf, I think we really would have had a shot to win the tournament.”