Year in and year out, it seems Jefferson Academy girls soccer always has one or two prolific scorers that can carry it deep into the playoffs.
This season, that mantle passed onto senior Gianna Gagliano, whose 36 goals and 10 assists helped propel the Jaguars to their third consecutive appearance in the Class 3A state championship, where they fell 3-1 to Colorado Academy. Her coach, Matt Cassell, believed she may be one of the top five players to come through the program.
“She’s really good in the half spaces, so she finds the seams and plays in those half spaces and gets around defenders, and her timing is really good to get to the ball,” Cassell said. “Her first three steps, she’s very explosive. She can read the game, find the half space, and explode into the space. They’re very routine finishes. She’s not scoring crazy goals like some of the other players. It’s very simple.”
Gagliano finished her career with the Jaguars with 92 goals, all while adding 41 assists to her totals. The Daily Camera girls soccer player of the year, however, owed all of her success to her teammates and fellow senior leaders.
“My class has gone to the title game three years in a row, too, so we’ve played in the state championship three different times, and I think it just speaks volumes to the legacy that JA soccer has,” Gagliano said. “We consistently bring in really good soccer players and really good people, and it’s so fun to be a part of a team that’s so successful like that.
“It was pretty awesome to be able to be up there with other of the really prolific goal scorers that have gone through JA that are doing awesome things in college right now, too. It was kind of a lot of pressure, but it’s awesome to be put up there with those people.”
Now that her high school career is firmly behind her, Gagliano hopes to make as much of an impact as she can when she joins her new team at the University of the Pacific in California. Ever the hard worker, she’s been hitting the field at JA as often as she can throughout the summer, running and practicing with her younger brother, who’s about to come into the school as a freshman.
She’s already left quite the legacy with the Jags.
“She always has a smile on her face and she’s always just enjoying playing, but she just comes out and she works hard,” Cassell said. “Now, she would pull players to the side and put her arm around them and encourage them and let them know, ‘Hey, this is what we need to do.’ But she has a really unique ability to lead through kindness and she’s so good. Everybody looks up to her and they see what she can do at the ball and in front of the goal and they want to emulate her.”
