Coach Happy with Effort in Tough Loss Ahead of Conference Play

by Cerwin D Haynes

(thumbnail by Sophia Priebe)

East LA College Men's Soccer head coach Eddie Flores always likes to use the team's non-conference schedule - what he refers to as the "preseason" - to get his squads ready for South Coast Conference play, which usually consists of a gauntlet of high-quality teams in the SoCal region. He expects to face a high-level of physical and skilled play, with his goal to have his team prepared for it.

Despite losing a close and chippy 2-1 battle tonight with the Vaqueros of Santa Barbara City College, Coach Flores was happy with how hard the team played.

"This is the best game they've played", said coach. "This is the type of effort we need once conference starts next week."

Flores' observations say a lot: the team (6-4-1) is off to their best start since 2017, and had won their last three games prior to tonight. Yet there was evidence that coach wasn't entirely happy with the team's progression during that streak. To wit: Flores and his staff spent most of their postgame speech last Friday (a 3-2 win over Glendale CC) voicing concerns about early-game defensive issues.

ELAC gave up the first goal tonight, but it wasn't within the first 15 minutes of play as had been the case in many of their previous games. The Huskies were called for a handball foul inside their box. On the ensuing PK, Brandon Garcia de la Fuente faked out GK Eduardo Gonzalez, booting the ball to the left corner of the net while Gonzalez dove right(19').

SBCC would score again 16 minutes later: an 18-ft blast from Charles Jay Retzer off the right side eluded Gonzalez as he dove to his left. The ball found the back-left corner of the net again for a 2-0 lead for the visitors.

But The Pack would not hang their heads bowed: right before the halftime whistle, Anco Veiga had the ball deep on the left side of ELAC's offensive side. He booted a wonderful setup pass that found Matthew Cortez nine feet in front of the net and with the angle on the Vaqueros GK Marco Rotundo. Cortez kicked and found net, and the Huskies closed within a goal going into the half.

Play had begun to get chippy in the first half, but in the second half it became downright physical. A total of seven(!) yellow cards were assessed in the latter half - four to SBCC, three to ELAC. The home Green tried to turn up the offensive pressure, but either just missed getting position on entry passes near the vaqueros net, or were thwarted by good defensive positioning by the visitors that kept ELAC from getting a clean shot at the net. The Huskies played through the physicality and squeezed the juice, but couldn't come up with second goal: Santa Barbara (3-2-3) would come away with the 2-1 win.