GILROY—After being swept by Christopher last year, Gilroy wanted to prove its a completely different team.
The Mustangs did just that and took the Cougars by surprise in the first half of Tuesday’s contest. Unfortunately for the home team, it ran out of steam and substitutes resulting in a 13-6 loss.
Gilroy scored twice on goals from Sam Mandel and Brendan Reimer in the opening minutes and Christopher answered as time wound down in the first period. Mandel added another just over two minutes into the second to give the Mustangs a 3-1 lead at the half.
“We had a great start, but the players definitely got tired,” Mandel said. “We’ve got a lot of freshmen and first time players. We’ve got five veterans and we got tired. By the half we were really smoked. When they started switching teams on us again and again and again, it really pounded us down. It was definitely tough.”
The Cougars used the half to regroup and came out with a vengeance in the third period, scoring four goals—three of which came from Zach Gallardo—to lead 6-4. Gallardo scored four more in the fourth, including a blast from mid-pool and another as time expired for the win. While he was limited in the first half, the Cougar said he’s used to having to be patient before letting his offensive prowess shine.
“People come down and they drop on me and I can’t do anything and I’m like ‘OK, they’re going to play like that.’ I wait and I strike when I need to,” Gallardo, who had eight goals, said. “I’m not the person that needs to get the goal right away. I’ll wait for my time and I’ll strike then.”
Ryan Weberg was stellar for the Cougars in net, racking up 10 saves in the game. The senior netminder displayed no rust, despite taking his junior year off rehabbing a shoulder injury. Weberg said he’s happy to back in the pool with his teammates, especially when it’s Gilroy on the other side, but the game didn’t come without it’s challenges:
“Playing the far end is definitely tough, you’ve got the sun in your eyes,” he said. “It’s kind of tough in that way, it’s tough to see—you can’t even see your own players. They played great as a team, they played hard, we just played a little better. We had great teamwork. We’re a bit bigger of a team; they got tired out, so we were able to just keep pushing them.”
Reimer, who was celebrating his birthday, led the Mustangs with three goals on four attempts, including a penalty shot goal at the end of the third quarter.
“My birthday wasn’t really on my mind; I was just trying to win really against Christopher,” he said. “We beat them two years ago, but we’re just trying to get redemption. I thought we had them, but it sucks we didn’t.”
Moving forward, Gilroy coach Fred Latimore said the team will focus on it’s conditioning to be better prepared for the next time they see the Cougars at 4 p.m. Oct. 7 at CHS.
“We have to out-condition them three times as much—one for their first team, one for their second team and their third team, they don’t have one. We’ll be able to go all the way,” Mandel said of prepping for Gilroy’s next meeting with Christopher.
“Tomorrow we’re doing conditioning until we puke,” Reimer added. “I think after we’re conditioned, we’ll come back and give them a better game.”
The Mustangs will play at Stevenson at 5 pm. Thursday and will host San Benito at 5 p.m. Monday.
Cougars coach Paul Wells said he introduced new plays in anticipation for the team’s meeting with Palma at 4 p.m. Monday. He said the team may not have had enough time to digest them and will work on implementing those for that game.
“We had trouble with their 2-meter alignment and we shouldn’t have,” Wells said. “We had trouble pressing, so we have to work on some basic technique here. We have work on some technique on 2-meter D—we have some homework to do.”
