Each of Sonoma Academy’s Winter sports teams competed this past weekend in their last North Coast Section (NCS) playoff games and will be moving to the State Championships this week.
Girls Soccer beat University High School with an exciting “golden goal” on Ziemer field Friday night, taking the NCS Division II Championship! Boys Basketball fought hard before ultimately losing to Eureka 52-58 during Saturday’s Division IV NCS final at Cardinal Newman, while Girls Basketball won the third-place consolation match against Gateway San Francisco in their away game Saturday night 53-40.
All three will be continuing into the State competition, with their first games on Tuesday. Girls Soccer, seeded #4, will take their home field again at 5pm to play Aptos (#5) in the Division III Norcal State Championship. Boys Basketball (#7) will follow directly afterwards in the Sonoma Academy gym at 7pm, playing in the first round of their CIF Norcal State Championship matchup versus #10 seed Gridley. Girls Basketball (#15) will travel to John Adams Academy (#2), located in El Dorado Hills, to continue their own postseason run.
In case you missed any of this weekend’s exciting games, don’t worry! Paw Print was there to cover it for you.
GIRLS SOCCER WINS DII NORTH COAST SECTION CHAMPIONSHIP FOR THE FIRST TIME IN SCHOOL HISTORY
Girls Soccer excelled in their final NCS Playoff game Friday night, beating University High School 1-0 during sudden death in overtime.
The Coyotes fought strong for the whole game, but a key switch before the second half put the momentum on their side. As Malaya Park (‘26) said, “In the first half we were playing a 4-3-3 against a 4-4-2, which means we were outnumbered in the midfield in the beginning, but then once we switched to a 4-4-2, we were all matched up.” Still, the teams held out for a tied 0-0 game to continue into overtime.
Dahlia Scanlon (‘27), SA’s starting goalie and previous Athlete of the Week, had a remarkable performance highlighted by two reflex action saves on the goal line in the first half against University’s dangerous set piece attack from corner kicks.
Avery Cline (‘26) praised Scanlon’s performance and added that she credited the whole team for the win: “I think that we put everything out there on the field, and we got the goals, and we put in the effort.”
No player, however, could deny that Elaina Bruntlett (‘27) deserved a special shoutout.
Bruntlett, one of the team’s four captains, was a key offensive presence. She had several shots on target which were stopped by University’s goalkeeper, including a goal which was ruled offside in the second half. Bruntlett scored the game-winning goal in the second overtime period in a thrilling sequence.
Amia Tantarelli (‘27) hit a beautiful long ball into the box—perfectly placed for Bruntlett. She beat the keeper to the ball, and nearly scored on a header, but the ball hit the post. After colliding with the goalie, Bruntlett rolled on the ground, stood, raced another defender to the ball and finally put it away in the top of the net to win the game.
With that goal, the SA Girls Soccer team got their first NCS title since 2018, and their first-ever NCS title in Division II. Previously, the team has only competed within Division IV. In 2024, however, the California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) changed their playoff bracket development to allow teams to compete in divisions outside of their normal league for playoffs, hoping to improve “Competitive Equity” in sports. For SA, a Division IV school, the team can only move up two divisions for playoffs; essentially, this was the absolute highest they could go, and they still managed to excel.
Before Friday, SA had seven NCS titles, and, despite many showings at semifinals, they hadn’t won one since moving from the fall to the winter season to face more competitive teams. Last year, the team lost the DII semifinals to Cardinal Newman, making for an exciting game on Friday to prove the group’s talent and growth.
Additionally, as Caitlin Koida (‘26) stated, the team’s history with University High School, along with Piedmont High School, who the Coyotes beat in the first round of this year’s playoffs, made the win even more satisfying: “We lost to this team our sophomore year. We played Piedmont earlier on and we lost to them our freshman year, and so we got to play two teams that were previously season-ending games.”
However, despite this win, there will be some difficulties for future years. As Cline shared, “Next year we’re probably gonna be playing in one of the public schools’ leagues, [competing with] bigger schools, because a lot of the teams in our league dropped out because their program isn’t strong enough or they’re gonna move to the fall.” These teams include Cloverdale High School and Roseland University Prep.
Park explained what this league change really means: “Next year it’s gonna be harder to even get to the playoffs.”
The team is also losing many starting defensive players as Park, Cline and Koida graduate. As it is, multiple players have shifted from their usual positions to help the Coyotes, including Hannah Christensen (‘28), who plays centerback for Northcoast FC but midfield for SA, and Elaina Bruntlett (‘27), the Coyotes’ main striker despite being a defender for Santa Rosa United.
Potentially, these changes could mean that this championship will be the only one for a while, as the team adjusts to the new league and less experienced players.
Koida cited that this has been a huge advantage this season: “Our team is very adaptable. We have a lot of players that are experienced in different positions. We have a lot of players that have played a bunch of different positions, so we’re able to use that flexibility to our advantage and play different formations and stuff like that. So depending on the team we’re against, we have Kate Bilal in the midfield versus Kate Bilal in the back, that sort of thing.”
Another special aspect of Friday’s game was the large crowd of spectators that came to cheer the ‘yotes on. After Bruntlett’s tension-building goal, the entire SA student section rushed the field to huddle around the soccer team.
Directly following the win, Student Leadership Council Athletic Coordinator Alexa Torres (‘27) said that, “Seeing everyone here is truly such a prideful Coyote moment, and seeing everyone run onto the field was just such a special experience. We love our athletes and we are so happy when we see our peers succeed. I’m just so proud of our Coyotes. Yip yip!”
Head Coach Chris Ziemer had to yell over the shrieks of the new champions to echo Torres’s sentiment on behalf of the team, saying, “We take a lot of pride in competing for our school, and to see everybody show up for the girls tonight was pretty awesome. They deserve it: we have a pretty good group, as we showed tonight and it was great to see the community show up. I’m just so proud of them all. It’s tough to reach that level and bump up two divisions and win and we showed how capable we were and found a way to get it done.”
The Coyotes’ season will continue into the CIF Northern California State competition this week, but for Cline, one of the team captains and a senior, this game, from the excitement to the student support, was simply amazing: “There’s no other way that I would want to end our playoff run. It’s the perfect senior year.”
BOYS BASKETBALL LOSES FINAL GAME OF NCS CHAMPIONSHIP AFTER RECORD SEASON
After a close game at Cardinal Newman, our Boys Basketball team lost 52-58 against the Eureka Loggers, snapping their five-game win streak in the process.
This game was truly neck and neck through the first three quarters, with a raucous crowd packing Newman’s John Fitzgerald Gym on Saturday night. After leading at the half, Noah Martinez (‘28), Marcel Nsizoa Ndi (‘28), Theo Schneiderman (‘26), Teo Foehl (‘27), and Mack Mahoney (‘27) were dominant in possession and scoring for the first part of the third quarter.
As Eureka began to pull back in the closing minutes of the third, Nsizoa Ndi scored two three-pointer shots in quick succession to protect our shrinking lead. However, the Loggers’ growing momentum ultimately proved insurmountable, and we ended the pivotal third quarter down two points, 42-40. Eureka continued to pull away from the Coyotes during the fourth quarter off of a corner three and some quick points off of transition, leaving our team in a deficit which we couldn’t recover from.
Schneiderman, recently featured in the Press Democrat’s coverage of the Coyotes, thought the Coyotes “played well, but had poor defensive execution.”
Even so, the Coyotes were serious contenders and have no reason to be disappointed about their performance last night or throughout the year—they even boast a 23-6 record. As Quinn Mahoney (‘26) stated, “It’s the most games we’ve ever won in a season, the farthest we’ve ever advanced in NCS and the first time we’ve made it to NorCals.”
This seems to be the beginning of an era of Sonoma Academy dominance in Boys Basketball.
The 25-26 season is Head Coach Kevin Christensen’s first as the head coach of the varsity team at SA after numerous years playing professional and college ball (read all about it in Kevin Christensen: What’s behind those icy blue eyes?). Furthermore, our team’s core is mostly comprised of sophomores and juniors, which will provide ample leadership on the court next year as the Coyotes look to avenge this loss in the NCS finals.
Right now though, the focus continues on this great postseason run which continues tomorrow at 7pm as the Coyotes face Gridley at home. An exciting element of this game will be Schneiderman’s pursuit of his 1000th point, as he is only six points away from this impressive record.
It isn’t time to say “goodbye” to the Eureka Loggers yet, either. It’s entirely possible that we meet them in our bracket again during the CIF Northern California State Championships.
“We’ll see them at state,” Schneiderman declared.
GIRLS BASKETBALL BEATS GATEWAY SF TO TAKE THIRD PLACE IN NCS
On Saturday night, the Girls Basketball team beat Gateway SF 53-40 to claim third place in the NCS championships. They were able to improve their record to 16-11 on the season, and are heading into the Northern California championships tomorrow looking to make a splash against John Adams Academy.
Their season, like that of the boys’ team, has also been a success. A dominant league performance placed them second within the North Central II division with 11 wins and three losses.
This group of highly motivated students has overcome many hurdles to reach the CIF Northern California State Championships, such as a blowout loss to league rivals Willits 51-25 back in early February.
Our Coyotes have truly rallied towards the end of the regular season and the postseason, coming back after their semifinals loss to San Domenico earlier last week to win the consolation match on Saturday night. It’s exciting to look at the future of this team for next year and seasons to come.
Layla Zekarias (‘26), team captain, agreed. She thought that the team truly ramped it up a notch at the end of the season, adding that “as a team, we would watch film at lunch. We practiced at free periods, talk, and text, and I think that has a lot to do with our success. We’re really close [now].”
This run will surely lay the foundation for future success in the Girls Basketball program at SA. Zekarias also wanted to shout out “Mila [Hernandez (‘29)], Siena Jasper (‘29), and Ava [Anderson (‘28)]. All of the girls, actually. I just know that they really love the game. It takes a bunch of driven people to make sure that everyone puts in good effort.”
Tomorrow night, the Coyotes will face an in-form John Adams Academy, the second seed in their bracket, in El Dorado Hills. We’re looking forward to cheering them on and hoping for a great victory away.
