Chatsworth’s Aim Is True

Members of the Granada Hills High girls’ soccer team painted their uniform numbers on their faces for Saturday’s City Section 4-A Division title match at East L.A. College.

The players might as well have painted targets on themselves, for Chatsworth took dead aim at the Highlanders, steamrolling them, 5-2, to capture its seventh title in nine years.

Jackie Fodor scored the Chancellors’ first three goals and the midfield of Pamela George, Beezy Preis, Megan Landress and Denise Paul carved up the Highlanders with their trademark short-passing game.

Granada Hills forged a brief first-half tie, but wilted as the match wore on.

“Each time we scored, they scored twice,” Highlander Michelle Vega said. “After their third goal, our heads got down.”

Top-seeded Chatsworth (18-1), last year’s 4-A champion, has a 156-16-3 record in its nine-year history. It was the Chancellors’ third victory this season over third-seeded Granada Hills (11-7-2), a Coast/Valley League rival.

“Granada Hills gave us a good fight and they really wanted us bad,” Preis said. “But we stepped up our game and beat them to the ball a lot.”

Fodor, a sophomore forward, was brilliant with the ball at her feet. She gave Chatsworth a 1-0 lead in the 11th minute when she crossed the ball near the right post and watched it carom off a defender and into the goal.

Granada Hills tied the match 11 minutes later when Amanda Light used her body to knock in a 30-yard free kick from Vega.

Chatsworth squelched any thoughts of an upset when Fodor scored in the 33rd and 37th minutes.

The first came when, pinned against the sideline near the Highlander goal, she beat a defender to the outside, then cut back and unleashed a 20-yard blast.

Four minutes later, she corralled the ball 40 yards from the goal and dribbled past Angelika Vega and Amber Dattilo before shooting the ball into the upper-left corner from 15 yards.

“We thought we could [guard] Jackie but I guess she proved us wrong,” Michelle Vega said. “She’s awesome.”

Granada Hills Coach Tom Harp concurred.

“She put on a few moves and went right through our defense,” Harp said. “She takes advantage of the shots she gets.”

Were that completely true, Fodor would have had five or six goals, for she missed a breakaway and two good chances from sharp angles.

Granada Hills made the score 3-2 on a breakaway goal by Light in the 44th minute but Chatsworth’s Shannon DeVos answered two minutes later and Preis added a goal in the 56th minute.

* SECTION FINALS: Chaminade girls win, but Cleveland girls and El Camino Real boys fall in championship matches. C10