Winter Season Is Over for Centaur Squads

The Culver City High School winter sports season officially came to an end on Tuesday afternoon. The last team in the dance, the girls soccer team, lost its second-round CIF Southern Section Division 4 playoff game 2-1 to top-seeded Westlake Village Oaks Christian.

The boys soccer team and girls basketball squads both made the playoffs but were eliminated in the first round, while the boys basketball team advanced to the second round of Division  3AA, but was eliminated from contention last Friday by sixth-seeded Torrance Bishop Montgomery.

As for the girls soccer team—coached by Scott Mair—it played valiantly in a losing effort. This is the furthest the Centaurs have advanced in Mair's five years and he said it’s the furthest the team has advanced since joining the Ocean League.

“We played with a lot of heart,” Mair said. “I couldn’t have asked for a better game from my girls.”

The game was a battle from the opening kickoff. Oaks Christian scored first at the 24-minute mark when Mandi Deardorff curved a shot over Centaurs goalkeeper Daniella Gutierrez’s head from five feet outside the penalty box. The Lions were able to maintain their one-goal lead into halftime.

Oaks Christian capitalized on Culver City's lone mistake to increase the lead early in the second half. On a goal kick, a Culver City defender left the ball short and the Lions' Bianca Deardorff was able to steal it and shoot by Gutierrez to make it 2-0.

“When you play a No.1 seed team, you cannot make any mistakes if you want to win,” Mair said. “We made one mistake and it cost us a goal and that ended up being the winning goal.”

Oaks Christian was without top scorer Ally Courtnall, who sustained a groin injury in the Lions' first-round matchup with Montclair and was unable to mount much of an attack early in the second half.

Approaching the 68-minute mark, senior forward Jennifer Mair broke through the Lions' defense, chasing a loose ball and was pulled down by Oaks Christian goalkeeper Sydney Socquet. That play set up a penalty kick that the Centaurs' senior predictably put past Socquet to pull Culver City back within a goal.

The score seemed to rile the Lions and they applied pressure for the rest of the game, holding strong on defense and playing predominantly in the opposition's half of the field until the referee blew the final whistle.

With that, the career of one of the most prolific scorers in Culver City High history was over. Jennifer Mair finished the season with 33 goals and 16 assists for a total of 82 points her senior year. She ranked eighth in points in the Southern Section and 10th in goals scored. To put her stats in perspective, she had 32 points more than the Ocean League’s second-highest scorer.

The Centaurs finished the season with a record of 20-6-1, their best under Mair. With a number of freshman like Haylie Pina, Cheynne Thomas and Sydney Hibbs making contributions, the program looks to be in great position for the future.

Now it's on to the spring season, which includes baseball, , softball and boys volleyball.