By Jerry Flores
A hat trick by Husky freshman forward Perla Navarro allowed women’s soccer to win 3-0 on Friday against El Camino College at Weingart Stadium.
“I’m really happy because I scored the three goals and because we got the win,” said Navarro.
Since the beginning of the game, Navarro attacked and almost scored when she dribbled the ball on the right side and shot from inside the penalty box. However, her shot hit the left post.
The game was close for most of the first half. Both teams fought for the ball in the midfield and attacked each other’s defense.
At minute 27, Navarro took the ball inside the penalty box and kicked the ball through El Camino’s freshman defender Erica Holcombe’s legs where she crossed the shot to the left side and scored the first goal for East Los Angeles College.
El Camino continued attacking the Huskies’ defense from the center to tie the game, but missed all the opportunities they created.
An error by El Camino freshman defender Guadalupe Tovar, who tried to kick the ball out, allowed Navarro to score the second goal.
“We have to improve in our defense. Today we made some defensive errors in the game that allowed ELAC to win the game,” said El Camino head coach John Britton.
During the second half, El Camino tried to score by attacking from the left side.
Sophomore forward Robin Riggs created nine opportunities throughout the game.
Another player who was pushing hard to score for El Camino was sophomore forward Naleli Mendoza. She made six shots, three of them hit in the vertical post of the Huskies goal.
“We played better in the second half. We created many opportunities with our forwards and unfortunately we couldn’t score,” said Britton.
Later in the second half, defensive errors from El Camino continued when freshman defender Ashley Hanna tried to cover the ball with her body, but Navarro stretched her leg through Hanna’s right side, causing the ball to hit the left side and score.
“ELAC has a really good forward (Navarro). She is really fast and caused a lot of problems to our defenders and scored three goals on us,” said Britton.
The Huskies added another win yesterday against Long Beach City College.
Huskies are 3-5-3 overall and 1-3 in the South Coast Conference-North play.
The team will travel for a non-conference game at Compton College on Friday at 4 p.m.