3-A BOYS : El Toro Shuts Out Cerritos, Celebrates First Sectional Title
El Toro High School’s Ali Akyol will take home to West Germany more than neon T-shirts and American experiences.
Akyol, a foreign exchange student at El Toro, scored the game-winning goal Saturday night in the Chargers’ 2-0 victory over Cerritos for the Southern Section 3-A boys’ soccer championship at Gahr High’s Hanford Rants Stadium.
El Toro took a 1-0 lead on Akyol’s goal in the 65th minute--but only after a Cerritos defender slipped on the wet turf. The slip allowed Brad Wilson to make a pass to Doug Barry, who chipped the ball in to Akyol, who easily headed a soft shot into an open net.
Wilson scored El Toro’s second goal in the 79th minute on a breakaway.
It was the second time El Toro played a game at night under lights on a dew-slickened field this season. And the Chargers’ previous experience helped them secure their first-ever sectional soccer championship.
Neither team mounted much of a scoring threat through 65 minutes, until Akyol’s goal.
El Toro (15-3-2), which came out of the competitive South Coast League, made its debut appearance in a section final a rather impressive one. The Chargers looked like a championship contender when they shut out Cerritos in the first half.
It did take an offsides infraction, however, to keep the game scoreless at the intermission. Four minutes into the game, Cerritos scoring star Eddie Soto, who had scored 28 goals this season, lived up to his reputation by getting past El Toro’s Ryan Marek and scoring. But, the goal was disallowed, Soto being offsides on the play.
That was the only mistake Marek made as he was assigned to shadow Soto step-for-step throughout the entire game.
El Toro had three scoring opportunities in the first 14 minutes of the second half and Cerritos had none.
The Chargers’ best chance came in the 54th minute on a crossing pass by Akyol to Ian Doleman. But Akyol’s pass from the right side led Doleman too much.
Cerritos (21-4), the San Gabriel League champions, had recorded shutouts in their quarterfinal and semifinal victories.