As the fall season came to a close, six Santa Barbara High athletic programs made their way to CIF Southern Section playoffs this month. Of these teams, girls tennis proved to be the most successful as they became the champions of CIF Division 3 on November 15. The squad faced Santa Monica in the finals and had overtaken Agoura High, West Ranch, Eleanor Roosevelt High, and Apple Valley in the previous rounds. “It’s actually so crazy to see how far this team has come, I think the support that we have for each other is the reason that we were able to go so far… so much farther than we had before, it’s been such a long time and it’s just such a testament to how hard this team works,” said co-captain Mary Moses of the squad’s success. This victory marked the first CIF championship for the girls tennis program since 2011. 

Unfortunately, it didn’t go as well for other teams as SBHS Football lost in the first round of Division 4 playoffs against the El Modena Vanguards. It was a close game with the Golden Tornado falling short by one score in the fourth quarter, bringing the final to 28-21. The team had gone into halftime up 21-7 with passing touchdowns from Laird Finkle to Mason Morales and Sammie Congdon, in addition to a score by Kai Mault. Sadly the squad couldn’t get momentum back in the second quarter and allowed the Vanguards to score three times before the game came to an end. However, the team had a positive season overall despite facing adversity due to quarterback Laird Finkle’s injury, and were able to finish out the year at 6-4-1.

Girls golf competed in the CIF Southern Section Division 5 playoffs, where they were eliminated after the first round. “I really respected the team’s encouragement for each other, we all watched as we succeeded and CIF pushed us as a team to be better for next year” a golf team member stated. “This was a great experience for me and I’m really excited for next season.” 

Similarly, girls volleyball also lost in their first CIF matchup against Riverside earlier this month. 

As for the Dons cross country team, three runners advanced to CIF Division 2 preliminaries at MT SAC on November 16. Seniors Madeleine Van Bebber and Matthias Everest ran course bests in their final race as Dons, while Nicholas Tassos advanced to the Division 2 finals. At press time, the final race has not yet occurred. 

Boys water polo made it to the second round of playoffs before suffering a loss against Temple City 8-6, having previously defeated Corona 16-6 in the first round. “Our overall offense and defense was better…they just weren’t that good.” Team members agreed regarding the Corona game. As for the second matchup, junior attacker Sam Walker said, “I don’t think our mindset was fully in the game and I feel like that cost us…it was a really close game.” Overall, Walker felt that, “We got a lot better than last year. Our goal was to at least make it to CIF and I feel like we had a strong run for it, we were definitely at our best at the end of the season and we came together and worked really well as a team…We just couldn’t get all the way there.” Junior center Lorenzo Russel agreed, saying, “we had a lot of improvement from last year and we played well this year, we beat some teams that we lost to last year and our goal was to make CIF and we achieved that goal, but we didn’t really get as far as we wanted to…I would have liked to have won all of it.”

Overall,  SBHS is so proud of all the team’s accomplishments and hope to see even more Dons athletic programs compete in CIF playoffs later this year.