Girls’ Basketball Player of the Year: Westmoor's Yazmeen Goo

There was heartbreak to follow, as Westmoor would fall in the Peninsula Athletic League Tournament finals to Menlo-Atherton. Then in the Central Coast Section Division II playoffs, Goo’s varsity career came to an end with a 40-33 loss to St. Francis.

Goo didn’t give up without a fight in her CCS swan song though. The senior scored 23 of Westmoor’s 33 points in the game, marking a new season high in trying to put the team on her shoulders like she did so many times in her four years as a varsity starter.

“I think she was as effective as usual,” Westmoor head coach Mike Keough said. “It was just one of those games where you could see she had that focus and she was going to be able to do whatever she could to get us to that CCS championship game.”

To talk to Goo about the loss is to get an entirely different take. She quickly points out she missed two free throws in the closing minutes. She reinforces the notion she could have, and should have, done more to help her team to the elusive CCS championship game.

Yet her respect for the opponent is evident as she readily offers a tip of the cap to a St. Francis team that Westmoor defeated earlier in the regular season.

“All around, they’re a very good team,” Goo said. “I think the first game they weren’t expecting us to come out of the gates how we did. So, I think the second game they were more aware of what we would do. I think they were very prepared. … For us, shots just weren’t falling. Our shooting, we’d had better days.”

The close of the 2014-15 campaign marked the end of a long journey not just for Goo, but for the two other four-year varsity starters: Marlene Alcantara and Nora Alataua. It is also the end of an era for Keough, as the third-year coach inherited the upstart mix of underclassmen in his first season of 2012-13.

It didn’t take long for Keough to identify his emerging point guard as a special talent.

“At first I thought it was potential,” Keough said. “And then I think she grew into one of the best girls to ever go to Westmoor.”

As a senior, Goo led the Rams with a double-digit scoring average. She also paced the squad in assists. She shared PAL North Division MVP honors with Terra Nova’s Arianna Sheehy. But Westmoor’s 83-31 overall record over Goo’s four seasons — including a 43-3 mark in PAL North Division play and a 36-0 league record over the past three seasons — stands alone.

“It’s definitely rare when you get a player like that,” Keough said. “I was lucky to have coached her.”

Goo’s basketball virtuosity started in Daly city with her hometown park-and-rec league when she was in grade school. She quickly moved to the AAU stage though, taking up with her first travel team as a fifth grader with San Francisco’s Mission Rec Rebels. She moved on to the San Francisco Eagles in middle school then changed briefly to Game Time at the outset of her Westmoor career. Following her sophomore season though, she went back to the Eagles under their new name, Golden City.

Through all the AAU coaching expertise Goo has received, however, she cites her father, Sullivan, as her most influential basketball mentor.

“He’s always been my main motivator,” Goo said. “He taught me all my skills, of course, because he’s the one I worked out with most of the time. The main thing he enforced upon me was to never give up.”

That she doesn’t. Her performance in the CCS semifinals against St. Francis was one of many to exemplify Goo’s no-quit attitude.

“She was focusing and she just had the drive the entire time,” Keough said. “She kept pushing herself and the team as well. She knew what she had to do. Even in our last two losses, she stepped up because she knew she had to.”

She earned Keough’s respect early in her career, to the point where Goo not only served as the team captain; she called all the shots on the floor with little interference from the sidelines.

“For the most part, we let them run as much as possible and made adjustments when we had to,” Keough said. “But during her junior year, it was more like, just let her go with it.”

Goo’s efforts culminated in a full athletic scholarship to play Division-II basketball at the University of Alaska, Anchorage, where if the Seawolves aren’t careful, Goo’s fiery play may just melt the ice of The Last Frontier.

“I think she was always really smart,” Keough said. “She has the basketball IQ for a point guard. … I think that was always her strong suit. She could always score the ball of course. Her biggest growth is just having that killer instinct.”