By Francisco Avila

Freshman left winger, Anthony, scored twice in the first half and propelled Horizon Science Academy-Southwest (1-0-5) to a 2-1 win against Instituto Health Sciences (3-0-2).

Instituto hoped to win this game and start to build on a positive performance, but Horizon proved to dominate many parts of the field and had a man-of-the-match performance by Anthony which proved enough for the 2-1 win.

The opening 40 minutes opened up as a very close, contested affair, but as soon as Anthony touched the ball it was a dominant contest from Horizon. Anthony scored two fantastic goals in the first half the first from outside the box hitting the top right corner which left the goalkeeper shocked. 

“To be honest, we did way better than the past few games,” he said. “I tried my best to be honest. I know I’m little, but I still tried my best to play around bigger players than me and use my body how I’m supposed to. But speaking to the first goal it was unexpected, to be honest.”

Before the end of the first half, Anthony then scored again to make it 2-0 at halftime with an impressive solo effort.

Horizon head coach, Jesus Garcia praised Anthony’s efforts calling it a man-of-the-match performance.

“Being the shortest player on the field, honestly, he was doing the best performance out of everybody,” Garcia said. “We’re proud of him, happy he’s on the team, and of course, won our match and MVP.”

Compared to the first half, the second half was a change of pace, as Instituto was now dominating the majority of the game. The squad fired off 15 shots, 12 of which were on goal. 

The Phoenix got one back in the second half early on with a goal from left winger, Luis Maruffo. His goal was assisted by left back, Arturo Morales, in a quick passing play that saw an easy finish for Maruffo. 

“It’s nice to have a goal, but we still got that loss, so come back stronger next time,” Maruffo said.

“Well, definitely we need to practice on our finishing because it was very sad and a little woeful,” Instituto head coach, Jose Villegas said. “Seeing how we have really good strikers, really good people that can take shots, but they just weren’t taking advantage of them. We haven’t had that mistake in a while, but it looks like we’re going to have to put our shooting shoes back on during practice. 

“We’ve got to make sure we’re creating chances and putting them away. So we’re going to put that to practice tomorrow.”

“I want to say thank you to the other team. That’s our second game playing them. The first time we won, the second time we lost. That’s a good rivalry right there. Good sportsmanship on the other team as well. 

“I know we’re going to turn it around from here. We’re going to go out on another win streak from now.”