By Liliana Marquez Saturday, Sept. 9
The men’s soccer team lost 4-3, to the No. 2-ranked team in the state, Oxnard College last Tuesday. Cory Valchis, Josh Vasquez, Tomas Cruz and Travis Bowen scored goals for the Condors.
The Huskies goals were scored by Giovani Reyes, Salvador Medrano and had one of the Condor’s defenders.
East Los Angeles College stands 1-1-1 overall. “We tasted victory, tie and now defeat. The question is how are we going to react now. I believe we are in the same situation as last year. We are barely getting to know some of the players,” Assistant Coach Felipe Bernal said.
The Huskies started with a 4-4-2 formation having Kevin Lichtenwalter, Carlos del Campo, Christian Ventura and Brian Hoist defending ELAC’s net.
Even though ELAC began with a defense composed of returning veteran players, Oxnard scored two goals during the first 15 minutes of the game.
“It was hard taking those two goals in the first 15 minutes. We were in shock. We then made the substitutions and we made some adjustments,” Bernal said.
ELAC’s first goal came at the expense of an Oxnard mistake. The Huskies created a play from the back off of six continuous passess. Lichtenwalter started the move and finished it down the wing, sending a crossed ball that one of the Oxnard defenders pushed in accidentally.
“We were (down) 2-1 and our confidence grew. We started playing better,” said Bernal. The score remained the same at the half. ELAC went with David Farias and Daniel Llanos up top in the second half.
ELAC created a play down the wing with Adolfo Larios passing to Medrano to score and tie the game two-all. A minute later a goal kick was awarded to ELAC. Lichtenwalter then threw the ball at a Condor player’s back, reacting to a foul that wasn’t called on that player, and the referee booked Lichtenwalter instead with a red card sending the Husky off the field and out of the game.
This left the Huskies one man short. “After Kevin (Lichtenwalter) was sent off we had to adjust. We had to drop a midfielder to defense and get one of the forwards out to play with a 4-4-1 formation,” Bernal said.
The Condors took advantage of ELAC being down a man and scored two goals in two minutes to lead, 4-2. ELAC’s Reyes found a way to score two minutes before the final whistle but to no avail as the Huskies lost.
“We were motivated to catch up and tie the game, when we did, we were kind of relieved because we were dominating most of the game. I believe that when Kevin got the red card, we had more pressure on us to put more effort into it, but it didn’t work out,” Reyes said.
Husky goalkeeper Juan Escobar said that he and his teammates did not play their best, and that this was reflected on the result. “We usually come out strong and hard, ready to win, but we came out slow, confident and lazy. We had many mistakes and lost the game, which is not good because all of our work is going to waste,” Escobar said.