Warriors Gain Soccer Championship With 2-1 Win Over Foothill

Assistant El Camino College soccer Coach Jim Millander felt a little uneasy.

His team had just captured its third state championship since 1982, and smiles abounded around a mud-sullied field in Torrance. Millander, though, wondered if the Warriors would lose the game’s Most Valuable Player, freshman Arturo Yepez, next year to a four-year college.

Yepez lifted the Warriors to a 2-1 overtime victory Saturday over longtime rival Foothill College of Los Altos Hills, taking a pass from freshman Felix Guillen six minutes into overtime and knocking the ball into the lower right corner of the Foothill goal.

“I don’t know what will happen,” said Millander, drenched from a friendly bout with his team’s water bucket. “I really hope Arturo stays. He’s just a freshman and he’s so good, it’ll be tough to keep him here.”

Millander could only think briefly about Yepez’s possible departure. There were too many hands of congratulations to shake. And that part came easy.

Coach Norm Jackson, whose club starts eight freshmen, was having little trouble savoring the win, either. A painful recovery from stomach surgery had kept Jackson away from coaching throughout the season, but he returned to help Millander and the Warriors capture four consecutive victories in the playoffs.

The last, of course, was the sweetest.

“We went up there last year and we took our licks (Foothill beat El Camino for the title in 1986),” said Jackson, a Liverpool native. “We’ve had them twice and they’ve had us twice (since 1982), and now next year is the rubber game. And we expect to beat them, we expect to beat them every time we play them.

“The thing about this team though was that Jimmy and I were not too sure, being a young team, whether we had enough to go all the way. Your first championship is the one you always remember, but I like this one, especially since we beat Foothill.”

The rivalry between El Camino and Foothill is clearly fierce. Foothill goalkeeper Scott Hughes spent several minutes after the loss in a verbal joust with El Camino fans. Meanwhile, most of the Foothill team left the field as quickly as possible. Few players offered mutual pats on the back. Only one Foothill player remained to accept his team’s runner-up trophy.

“I think Foothill should have had a bit more class,” Jackson said, “but they’re not very happy losing anytime.”

Despite playing much of the first half in its own end, Foothill took a 1-0 lead with 25 minutes lapsed when freshman Jorg Heide’s shot hit the El Camino crossbar, bounced out and ricocheted in after hitting Warrior goalie Mike Littman.

El Camino tied at the 48-minute mark on freshman Mark Sharp’s goal, with an assist from Yepez.

The two teams played another tense 48 minutes during which several El Camino shots bounced off the crossbar and goal posts before Yepez kicked the winner.

The championship did not end on Yepez’s goal, however. The Warriors held off Foothill for the next 24 minutes, actually saving their victory when Littman kicked out a loose ball that had landed inches from the goal line.

“That was a world-class save,” Millander said.

“I would think that was the game,” Jackson added.

Even with Littman’s heroics the MVP trophy belonged to Yepez. As he received it, his teammates cheered him with a chant, and Yepez could only talk of what El Camino had just accomplished behind Millander and Jackson. Next year didn’t matter.

“It feels extra special to beat Foothill and this year we did it for the coach,” Yepez said. “We did it from the heart and it feels great to let the coach know he has a team that really cares. The game was even but the team that wanted it the most had it.”