Quick start propels Burroughs girls’ soccer past Glendale
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BURBANK — After dominating Glendale High for most of the first half, the Burroughs girls’ soccer team allowed a late goal and went into halftime with a one-goal lead.
The Nitros score caused some concern for the Indians and coach Brady Riggs.
But the Indians coach’s fears were quelled when Burroughs opened the second half with a goal 20 seconds in. With a two-goal lead once again, the Indians defense did the rest, holding Glendale without a shot on goal in the second half in a 3-1 Pacific League victory at Memorial Field.
“You want to put teams away when you can and we didn’t put away some of our chances when we had them in that first half,” said Riggs, who got a pair of goals from Lauryn Bailey inside the match’s first eight minutes to lead to the win. “But what I can say about this group is that whenever we’ve kind of been like that, we’ve fixed it.
“And we fixed that by the way we came out to start the second half. And then I thought we completely shut them down in the last half of the game and we really didn’t give them anything.”
Burroughs (12-2-3, 7-1-2 in league) came into Tuesday’s game against Glendale (6-8-2, 2-5-1) just three points behind Crescenta Valley for first place in league. With the Falcons without a match Tuesday, the teams are tied at 23 points atop the league standings along with Arcadia.
With two matches remaining, Burroughs will visit Crescenta Valley for a 3:15 p.m. match Friday afternoon. Arcadia has three matches left.
The Indians remained in position to win their first league title since 1992-93 when they were members of the Foothill League by jumping out to an early lead against the Nitros.
Bailey scored on an assist from Anna Kasper in the seventh minute to put the hosts on the board. Bailey put Burroughs up, 2-0, with a goal one minute later on an assist from Trinity Vournas.
“It was nice to get out to the lead so early,” Bailey said. “But once we get a lead like that we have to keep pushing for more.”
Glendale didn’t have a shot on goal for the first 28 minutes. The Nitros finally broke through in the 39th minute. A ball was directed toward the Burroughs goal and it deflected off an Indians defender and in to cut the deficit to 2-1.
Glendale’s Lailah Navarro got credit for the goal.
The Nitros were kept in the first half by the play of their goalkeeper Julia Tharp, who made eight of her 11 saves in the first half.
“It was a bad first half for us and we really started off slow,” Glendale coach Victor Aquino said. “And the second half was the same early on.
“We just didn’t wake up today. We wanted to play, but we didn’t seem to want to work for it. We just didn’t create enough scoring opportunities to get us back into the game.”
In the second half, it took just 20 seconds for the Indians to increase their advantage to 3-1. Nathalie Celio made a nice pass to Catrina Villalpando, who beat the keeper for the goal.
“A win’s a win. Sometimes they’re ugly, like this one, but we’ll take it,” Riggs said.
Twitter: @jefftsports
