By Francisco Avila
Both Acero-Soto and Jones looked to continue their unbeaten seasons and good form when they met last week but it was the home team, Soto, which managed to keep its unbeaten season intact, taking down the visiting Jones squad 3-1.
“I think we take each game singular itself,” Soto head coach Andrew Hess said. “We talk about building upon ourselves, we break the season into different parts talking about what a conference is, then we have our conference, and we have our state. We like breaking it into small goals, and as a team, we develop trying to focus on those, and I think we’re doing a good job about it.
“We’re fortunate to have a lot of seniors coming back who’ve been in the program developing, so it’s nice to see them bonding and you can see that connection on the field.”
The opening 40 minutes were a very tight affair, with Jones controlling the opening 26 minutes of the half. Jones amassined a total of around 11 shots at the half, one of which resulted in a 1-0 lead in the 26th minute when senior midfielder Danny Rico struck a beautiful, outside-the-box free kick into the top right corner.
“I just think that at times the team just needs that leadership to carry on, but we started rough in the first 15 minutes, everybody in the team knew we’re a strong team that we can do what we can because we trained hard all season and it’s a tough pill to swallow, but I feel that goal was a confidence booster for the entire team,” he said. “We were playing strong, really aggressive, confident, but at the end of the day we were just unlucky, but we’ll come back stronger.”
Rico also spoke about his beautiful free kick, one of which he alsmost duplicated in the second half.
“It’s something I do here and there, but honestly it’s just muscle memory,” he said. “You really have to let your mind flow with the ball and you can’t overthink it because then you’re going to overshoot it you just have to let your mind clear and let the ball do the ball.”
Following Jones’ first-half goal, Soto looked to gain control late and hoped to equalize, doing so in the 39th minute off a play that saw senior forward Diego Aguilar find the ball and hit it as it came to him.
The second half was a complete change of energy by Soto as it came out of halftime with a lot more confidence following the tying goal. Soto opened the first 10 minutes of the second half with a goal, again from Aguilar, to make it 2-1 on the day. Aguilar made it 3-1 on a great attacking run from the right side that ended in an own goal off the Jones defender.
“I had a pretty good performance chasing every ball, never giving up, but it’s also on the team,” Aguilar said. “We did excellent defending, counter-attacking, and the usual.”
Jones looked to respond, including an opportunity like Rico’s free kick that again almost incredibly hit the top right corner but dramatically hit the top right post.
Jones head coach Daniel Eckels spoke on what his squad hopes to fix for its upcoming games.
“It was a good game,” he said. “Victoria Soto played well. I think it was intense. It was back and forth. I think the intensity was matched in a lot of places.
“We made some mistakes at the back and made sure that we corrected those. In terms of finishing it’s something we want to prioritize getting more shots on goal. I don’t know exactly how many we had, couldn’t have been more than four or five. It’s always something we want to concentrate on and they packed their defensive line pretty well, so that makes it harder.”
