MORGAN HILL – There’s still something lingering from years of
rivalry matchups that tends to intensify matters when Gilroy High
and Live Oak meet up on any given playing surface.
MORGAN HILL – There’s still something lingering from years of rivalry matchups that tends to intensify matters when Gilroy High and Live Oak meet up on any given playing surface.
With the soccer pitch the stage for a non-league encounter between the two South County schools, a gung-ho Acorns squad topped the Mustangs 1-0 on a gloomy Tuesday afternoon in Morgan Hill.
Junior Ben Hartl nestled the game’s lone goal into the back of the net in the 35th minute, providing just enough cushion in what turned out to be a cagey defensive struggle.
“They out hustled us. As a team we were better and stronger, but they were able to get us on the counter attacks and set pieces,” GHS junior midfielder Ale Hernandez said.
The victory lifts the Acorns (4-0-1) to their 16th straight decision with out a loss in regulation, dating back to last season.
Though both defenses grew stingy from the 18 in, the Mustangs’ attacks lacked the necessary cohesion to produce any sort of dangerous opportunities, amounting to scoring chances few and far between.
“We didn’t really come prepared to play. We didn’t take our chances once we got into the attacking third,” GHS forward Jonathan Diaz de Leon said.
Though usually not one to draw comparisons to previous contests and more so taking a learn-and-move-on approach, GHS head coach Armando Padilla said he couldn’t help but notice some similarities between Tuesday’s defeat and the Mustangs’ (2-2-2) only other loss this season – a 3-1 outcome at Bellarmine last week.
“We were flat, things weren’t working, we weren’t connecting as a collective unit and we struggled,” GHS head coach Armando Padilla said. “In the first half and second half we struggled just to combine passes. And when we did, we didn’t get an end result.”
The Acorns earned a corner kick late in the first half, and after the initial ball into the box was spit back out, Alejandro Diaz sent a pass back into the area where Jacob Montoya snagged it, settled it and dished a soft pass to the feet of Hartl who did the rest.
The lead stood into halftime and the rest of the way – but not with out a Mustangs’ dire straits, 10-minute surge at the end of the second half.
With urgency to salvage at least a tie on the agenda, the Mustangs began to mount reasonably successful attacks, though with unfavorable results.
In the 61st minute, Diaz de Leon ripped a right-footer from near the top of the box that was batted out by goalie Eric Saavedra right to the waiting feet of freshman Gasper Figueroa. However, the forward’s shot sailed harmlessly over the crossbar from point-blank range, sending a sigh of relief through Acorns’ faithful.
“We need to work on finishing,” Hernandez said simply.
With four minutes remaining, David Guenther put a pretty cross into the box where Alejandro Gaeta stood anchored with an open look at the net. His shot, too, missed high.
“Sometimes you have to grind one out and we just couldn’t do that today,” Padilla said.
