After a 43-30 loss to number-one seeded Justin-Siena in the MCAL semi-finals last Thursday, the girls’ varsity basketball season has ended.

The Giants lost to Justin-Siena in last year’s finals and said they were excited to face their rivals once again.

“I wasn’t super nervous, which is weird,” said junior Carli Jacks. “I guess I was more grateful that we got there and that we could play that game.”

Although the teams were tied 11-11 at the end of the first quarter, Redwood fell behind by the second quarter. At the half, the Giants were trailing by four points.

The Giants fought aggressively and kept themselves in the game, but failed to close the gap on the scoreboard.

At practice two days after their elimination playoff loss, the team decided not to send a bid into the North Coast Section (NCS) Tournament, a maneuver never seen under the leadership of Diane Peterson, who has coached the team for the past six years.

The team decided not to send in a bid due to how low they would have been ranked, which would have caused them to immediately play one of the top-seeded teams.

The team later found out that they would not have qualified even if they had sent in a bid, according to Peterson.

According to co-captain Danielle McCauley, the team didn’t feel it was worth it to keep practicing just to get beaten badly by one of the best teams in Northern California.

“We wanted to go out on a good note, and we thought we left everything out on the court in the last couple of games we had,” McCauley said.

Coach Peterson said she understood the decision of wanting to end the season with the accomplishment of making it to the MCAL semi-finals.

“I support any decision that they make and of course we want to continue coaching them, but when it comes down to it, we want what’s best for the girls,” Coach Peterson said. “There is nothing worse than going into a game that you don’t even want to play.”

Even though the Giants lost their last game by 13 points, their season was far from a disappointment.

According to Jacks, no one expected the team to go very far, especially after losing six seniors, their star sophomore point guard due to an injury, and their entire starting lineup.

However, they ended MCALs with a winning record of 8-6, beat a higher-ranked Novato team in the first round of the MCAL playoffs, and played competitively in their semifinal game against the first seeded team. Their overall record was 12-14.

“I don’t think anyone would have thought we would have made it as far as we did, even other teams in the league,” Peterson said.  “I think we surprised a lot of people, even though we knew we had it in us, we kind of shut down all of the haters out there and quieted people in the stands because we were a force to be reckoned with.”

Peterson stated that returning players like McCauley, Jacks, and junior Lauren Watkins were leaders throughout the season. McCauley, the team’s vocal leader, provided the necessary positive and competitive energy to feed the new players.

“[McCauley] is a competitor, and that is what every team needs — somebody who is going to get after her teammates when needed and pat them on the back when they do well and pick them up when they’re not,” Peterson said.

Early on in the season, the Giants were 5-1 and tied for first, but they hit a rough patch, which landed themselves in a three game losing streak, making their record 5-4. Jacks blames this struggle on their mentality.

“Effort was never a problem for us,” Jacks said. “It was our mental game. There were times when not everyone was mentally checked and locked in, which caused communication problems on the court like not having everyone on the same page.”

Peterson, who watched the girls experience hardships on and off the court, was impressed by the initiative the team displayed to clean up irrelevant conflicts and focus on the game.

“For some teams, going through turmoil can break a team and it can be just an absolute disaster, but with them they turned it into a positive and it made them that much stronger to go through those hard times together,” Peterson said.

Jacks said that this bad hiccup ultimately ended towards the middle and end of the season when the players started focusing on each others’ strengths and developing each others’ weaknesses, so it wasn’t as much of an individualized game anymore.

“They were tighter as a team those last four days than I have ever seen them be the entire year.  And, I think that also contributed to their decision about ending the season on a positive note. They thought they had done and accomplished everything that they had wanted to,” Peterson said.

As for next season, Coach Peterson believes the future looks extremely promising.

“We have a really really good group of girls coming up and I think this group really set the tone for the years ahead,” Peterson said.