By William Schuster,
Staff Writer.
How many students know every fall sport offered at Santa Rosa High School? How many have been to their games, meets or practices? How many know how these sports are scored, played or won? While our school has an incredible roster of sports, it often seems only athletes know how they work or decide to go to a meet or game.
One such sport is cross country, an intensive running-based sport culminating in three-mile races throughout the season. With meets sprinkled throughout fall, this is the prime time to learn how the sport works and support our fellow Panther runners.
Meets are hosted at a rival school or park, where schools face off in a head-to-head competition. Races are scored by assigning a number of points to the top five finishing runners from each team, with one point for first place, two points for second place and so on. After all of the runners finish, points are added up among the runners from each school, and the school that ends with the least amount of points wins the meet.
Another less known fall sport is girls’ tennis. For this sport, matches are usually every Tuesday and Thursday, one team facing off against another. Seven matches are played simultaneously: four ‘singles,’ a one-on-one match; and three ‘doubles,’ a two-on-two. Each player or pair scores points as their opponent misses a rally, starting at “love” (zero points), and progressing to 15; then 30; and finally to 40, with the first side to get past forty points winning that ‘game.’
The first player to win six of these ‘games’ wins the ‘set,’ and once a player has won two ‘sets,’ they have won that match on an individual basis. For the team as a whole to win, all that is needed is a simple majority of matches won, or at least four of the seven total. While it can sometimes be a confusing and very technical sport, the team is able to persevere and make the best of it. “Even if I lose, I’m having a good time,” said senior Itzel Rodriguez-Garica.
Girls’ volleyball is another sport that is entertaining to watch but may be confusing for some to understand. With six players on each team, games are played in sets, and the team that wins the majority of the five sets wins the game. A team needs to gain twenty-five points to win a set, and points are scored when an opposing team misses a ball sent by the other team.
As senior Sage Tropf put it, “[Volleyball’s] main objective is to not let the ball hit the floor in your side of the court. You get a maximum of three touches, typically a bump, set and spike, to get the ball over the net and inside the opponent’s side with each touch being done by a different person.”
While these are only a few of many remarkable sports here at SRHS, hopefully more students can grow to understand the inner workings of our teams and develop a newfound appreciation for the hard work our fellow Panther athletes put in every day.
