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Penalty kicks take down La Cañada boys’ soccer

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Perhaps the only thing longer than the car ride into the Santa Ynez Valley for the La Cañada High boys’ soccer team was the trip back.

After being pushed into penalty kicks for a second straight playoff match, the Spartans’ fortunes turned sour in a 0-0 (4-1 in penalty kicks) defeat to host Los Olivos Dunn in Tuesday afternoon’s CIF Southern Section Division VI semifinal contest.

The defeat ends a playoff run for La Cañada (14-4-7) in which it picked up three playoff wins after it captured its first Rio Hondo League title since the 2012-2013 season.

Though the Spartans advanced to the semifinals for the second time in three seasons, they missed out on an opportunity to qualify to the program’s first title match since 1996.

“When you get into PKs, the game is over because it’s a real gamble,” La Cañada first-year Coach Bruno Costa said. “When the game finished, I felt assured that my players gave every single drop of energy. We knew that PKs could go either way and today just wasn’t our day.”

The game remained scoreless after 80 minutes of regulation and 20 minutes of overtime, which forced deciding penalty kicks.

La Cañada advanced to the semifinals after a come-from-behind 2-1 victory over La Salle in the first round, a second-half rout in a 4-0 second-round victory over Webb and a 0-0 (5-3) upset over top-seeded Nogales in the quarterfinals.

La Cañada was the final area boys’ soccer team standing.

“After my first three, four games, I felt like we could have a really good season and I had high expectations,” Costa said. “I wouldn’t bring it up to anyone, but the players started to see things happening and believed. I hope that this isn’t it for us and that maybe we’ll get to state.”

La Cañada advanced to the CIF SoCal Regional Division III playoffs two seasons ago after marching to the semifinals in Division VI.

Pairings will be released Sunday.

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