Falcons able to score goals in bunches
NORTHWEST GLENDALE — Despite Pacific League play beginning weeks ago, the girls’ soccer teams from Crescenta Valley High and host Hoover entered Tuesday’s post-holiday break resumption of league matches with nothing but ties on their records.
The defending-champion Falcons made it clear early that trend would not continue.
Bombarding Hoover from the opening whistle with an onslaught of offense, Crescenta Valley had a three-goal lead within the first 10 minutes and didn’t stop until it had its highest scoring output of the season in a 10-0 win.
“Hoover, for whatever reason, we sometimes struggle with, but we made sure that we came out hard,” said Falcons Coach Jorden Schulz, whose team’s scoring was led by two goals apiece from Katie Callister, Mallory Carcich and Valentina Victoria. “We got our first [league] win, so we’re satisfied.”
Down by three goals, courtesy of Cassandra Orozco and Callister, before it ever even got the ball into the Falcons’ side of the midfield, Hoover finished without a shot attempt on the day.
“I think the kids were still at Christmas dinner or something, they were still half-asleep,” Hoover Coach Donal Kennedy said of his team’s rough start. “It totally changes the dynamic of the game. It was defensive mistakes and absent-mindedness that kind of put us in a hole and really hurt us.”
Sierra Rhoads stole a lazy Hoover pass near midfield and dribbled in for an unassisted goal from 20 yards out to make it 4-0 barely a minute after Callister had scored her second goal.
It would be 16 more minutes before Mea Zuiderveen scored on a corner kick from Claudia Sepulveda to make it 5-0 going into halftime.
“The kids, their chins went down and it took a lot of the fight out of them,” said Kennedy, whose squad is now 3-3-1 and 0-1-1 in league. “We’re a much better team than we showed today.”
In the 49th minute, Victoria kicked off the Falcons’ second-half scoring, which also included tallies from Dani Busta and Carcich.
“We tried to work on getting goals off crosses, especially in the second half,” said Schulz, whose team improved to 3-1-3 and 1-0-2. “We’re right in there, they know they can score. It was a tough preseason with getting goals, but we’re on the uprise with getting goals in and trying to be more of a unit.”