It’s late November and the women’s soccer team is competing in the second round of playoffs of the California Community College Athletic Association women’s soccer championship. Their opponent? Hartnell College and the game is tense.

After 90 minutes and with neither side able to score, the game goes into overtime. Even with the additional time, the game is still even and penalties look inevitable, however, the breakthrough would come but not for the Hawks.

In the 117th minute Hartnell College scored a goal that not only would end the game, but the Hawks’ season as a whole. The Hawks ended their season with a record of 11 wins, three draws and eight losses.

Flash forward to this week and the women’s soccer team is embarking on this journey again as they start conference play on Friday at home against Solano Community College.

Head coach Cesar Plasencia said they had the reputation of being the best playing team in the state.

“We outplayed pretty much everyone we played against, but our game is about finishing and finding goals and even in our playoff loss to Hartnell we were better than they were,” he said.

Plasencia said it is the mix of the returning players who have playoff experience and the quality new recruits that has him excited and optimistic about this season.

“We always try to stay between that 50% new 50% returners so the veteran players can educate the new players on the culture, discipline issues and how we do things,” Plasencia said.

Sophomore forward Sadie Stoll said the starting line up is sophomore heavy.

“All our freshmen work really hard to keep up with us and honestly there is not a big drop off between our freshman and our sophomores,” Stoll said.

Stoll has had a solid start to the season, netting seven goals and assisting two. The team so far has scored a total of 18 goals, meaning Stoll has participated in 50% of the team’s goals.

The Hawks head into conference play with a record of five wins, two draws and two losses.

“Defensively we have been solid,” Plasencia said. “All of our strikers have been playing pretty well, we’ve had good effort in every single game and we’ve got good team chemistry.”

He said one thing the team still needs to work on is finishing, especially highlighting that there were games where they should have had a lot more goals than they did.

“The confidence in front of the goal comes with more real opportunities. In practice they’re great, but those aren’t real meaningful moments,” Plasencia said. “We’re talented enough to be able to overcome that as we continue to get better.”

Stoll said their losses were “good losses” because it provided the team with some wake up calls and showed them what they needed to work on.

Sophomore midfielder Emily Bailey said she agreed with Stoll.

“It was good for us because it showed us that this shouldn’t happen again,” Bailey said.

Plasencia said their objective is to get to the final four, however, to him success goes beyond what happens on the field.

“Are they graduating? What kind of growth are they having as people?” Plasencia said. There’s a lot of things our program is about even though the winning and the losing is what highlights success,”

He said each player is valued as a person and wants to make sure his players are prepared for whatever challenges they may face.

The Hawks were recently ranked 13th in the state by the California Community College Sports Information Association.

Bailey said everyone is putting 110% everyday in training. “So continuing that throughout the rest of the season and hoping to come out on top so we make playoffs and go as far as we can.”