St. Francis High soccer’s upset bid of Loyola comes up short
LA CAÑADA — Pride mixed with disappointment left a bitter feeling for the St. Francis High soccer team Friday afternoon.
The Golden Knights were on the verge of a major upset before allowing two goals over the final 12 minutes and falling to visiting Loyola, 2-1, in Mission League play.
“We thought we did enough to get the point today, but it didn’t work out,” St. Francis Coach Glen Appels said. “This was our third game this week – we had a good game Wednesday against [Harvard-Westlake] and we just wanted to play well again today.”
With the victory, the CIF Southern Section Division I second-ranked Cubs (15-3-4 overall, 9-0-1 in league) clinched their seventh straight league championship, while St. Francis (9-7-4, 4-3-3) heads into an important home league tilt versus Alemany (7-6-4, 5-5) on Monday with third place in league, and a playoff berth, up for grabs.
While the score may not seem like a silver lining, St. Francis certainly performed better than when the Golden Knights traveled to Los Angeles on Jan. 16 and lost to Loyola, 5-0.
“I’m proud of this team’s effort today,” Appels said. “We’ve grown up a lot since that game. We’ve become a better team since then.”
Unfortunately for St. Francis, Friday’s growth spurt was painful, particularly in the 73rd minute when Loyola scored the match-winner.
Cubs senior halfback Sam Kitaj hurled a deep throw-in from the visitor’s sideline into the box.
The ball appeared destined to go out of bounds, but was touched by St. Francis’ goalie and scored.
The goal was the second of two set piece scores for the Cubs, who knotted the game at 1 in the 68th minute on a spinning header from senior Tommy Fraher off a free kick from senior Adam Eaton.
“It makes it disappointing to give up two goals on set pieces, but we practice against them,” St. Francis defender Michael Cianna said. “Now we have a big game coming up and we’re still trying to make it to CIF. Our season is not over.”
After the Kitaj goal, St. Francis threw all its efforts into equalizing and nearly did with two shots on goal over the match’s final 90 seconds.
The Golden Knights came within inches of tying in the 80th minute when senior defender Glenn Ramos tapped a shot that required a back-pedaling one-handed save from Loyola goalie Collin Valdivia right at the goal line. The St. Francis bench quickly protested that the ball had entirely broken the plane, but to no avail.
St. Francis was only credited with one goal Friday and that came off its own set piece.
Sophomore Liam Snashall booted a corner kick into the box that was initially headed by senior Alex Hall, who was in the middle of the penalty area, to senior fullback Jason Carmody, who was positioned to the right of the box.
Carmody leaped and one-timed his own header into the back of the net to give St. Francis a 1-0 lead in the 58th minute.
“It wasn’t really a set play that we had,” Carmody said. “The play just sort of happened and I did my best to get my head on the ball.”
Ramos had one additional solid look at goal for the Golden Knights when the defender shot wide right from about 12 yards off a pass from Clayton Green.
The scoring opportunity was the last the Golden Knights took with the lead.