Sophomore midfielder Lyanna Farran was visibly frustrated after the women’s soccer team had its 12-game winning streak snapped against Mt. San Antonio College after a late-game whistle had the opponent score off penalties in order to tie the game at 2-2 Tuesday, Oct. 22.
Throughout the entire game, the match was close, physical and up-tempo.
A foul call with one minute left in the game resulted in sophomore forward Diana Enriquez for Mt. San Antonio tying the game off a penalty kick after the Cerritos College women’s team scored minutes earlier in order to have the advantage.
“I’m really disappointed,” Farran said. “I feel we could have come out with more energy. The team I know that we are, we should have been winning five, zero.”
She added, “The penalty kick really hurt us in the end because I feel we should have come out with the win. Penalty kicks are a cheap way to win so I just feel like it sucked, it wasn’t fair.”
The disappointment that accompanies such an outcome was evident with head coach Ruben Gonzalez as well.
“We’re not going to make excuses. Obviously from our point of view, it wasn’t a penalty kick, but we had four or five opportunities to score, besides the two goals that we scored, and we didn’t put them away. That’s what happens when you leave an opponent and you give them confidence. You don’t put them away and it comes to a referee blowing a whistle. It happens.”
The outcome was not limited to simply one penalty kick in the final minute of the game, as Gonzalez feels the team that was out on the field was not the same team that entered this game undefeated.
“We didn’t play one of our better games. We had clear opportunities, we had three or four breakaways in the first half and we missed. We score those, the game ends up being four or five to two instead of two to two.”
For freshman goalkeeper Adrianna Salazar, the high-energy atmosphere of the game was something that should have been taken advantage of for the team, but simply wasn’t.
“They had high energy, they came out strong. There was more effort in the beginning. If we came out with that same max-energy, we could have capitalized and made some goals.”
Gonzalez seeks to continue the hard work that was implemented throughout the season and rectify the mistakes from this game against Los Angeles Harbor College Friday, Oct. 25.
“Championship teams bounce back. For us, this was a loss. It feels like a loss, it is a loss. Our mentality is that we have to prepare (Wednesday) and Thursday against (Los Angeles Harbor College). When you have a target on your back like we do with being the no. one team in the country, every game is going to be like a championship game for them.”
Farran said, “After this one, we are definitely going to learn and come out way harder than this game.”
