LJHS field hockey goalie Adalee Branstetter: Dynamic travel through Czechia

LA JOLLA – “It was so pretty — the architecture and other things. We took the train from Czechia to Austria. All the green — it was super pretty,” remembers Adalee Branstetter, La Jolla High School’s goalkeeper, of her visit to her sister Aubrey’s college location for a year abroad.

In fact, Adalee — don’t call her “Addy” — enjoys the geography of a bunch of places, having traveled to Europe and with her travel team here regionally. “I like making connections: ‘These three look like a hamburger,’ so I can remember Hungary that way.”

Great minds think alike, so Viking head coach Amanda Combs Warford located the 5-foot-2-inch tall sparkplug at goalkeeper as she grew up in the Coastal Clash field hockey program. Going everywhere in the world, and going nowhere on the field — except to slide and dive to block shots on goal.

Let Adalee tell you about it: “I play soccer and I track (sprints — “I’m gonna try it for the first time next spring for the track team”). But in field hockey, I like sliding and diving. With those, since I’m short, I can cover more of the field.”

She’s mentoring JV goalie Paulina Paredes by teaching her the two key skills. Sliding involves skating her leg out in a lunge to block a shot. Diving is literally that — diving onto the ground, making the ultimate sacrifice of putting her body in the way of the ball.

In her second year in high school, Branstetter is already first-string. “Playing alongside the seniors, I don’t feel I have to take a major leadership role. I can see the whole field in front of me, so I call out to my midfielders, like, ‘Oh, Sofia (Saiegh), you have someone behind you.’

“Or I’m talking to the defenders: Lilly (Ferrari) and Sav(annah Putnam) on my right, Olivia (Morrison-Reyes) or Allison (Wittkow) on the other side.”

With Combs Warford beginning her ninth season at La Jolla, she has built the Vikings into an elite program, reaching the CIF Section finals against crosstown rival Bishop’s under former LJHS athletic director Paula Conway. The two teams played Aug. 9 with the 1-0 win going to the Knights in the last minute on a corner hit at the Del Norte Jamboree.

Another rivalry is growing intra-house, between Amanda and her husband and co-coach Tucker Warford, who took over the reins at Del Norte last year. The Vikes beat his team 2-0 in the game before the Bishop’s contest at the Jamboree. Imagine the conversations over that dinner table.

But meanwhile, Combs Warford deploys a goalie who embodies total positivity in the compact Branstetter, who anchors the defense in goal and says proudly, “I know (in geography) Kosovo, North Macedonia, Denmark. I know all of Europe.”

She listens to her dad’s “older” music, like “Ocean Man” by the group Ween, which in a way represents her story: “Ocean man, the voyage to the corner of the globe is a real trip.”