Early momentum fades for GCC women’s soccer against PCC
PASADENA — With a quick goal to open scoring in the eighth minute on Tuesday at Robinson Field, the Glendale Community College women’s soccer team got the start it was looking for against host Pasadena City College.
Unfortunately for the Vaqueros, Michelle Anacker’s unassisted tally was the only shot the team would get off for the rest of the first half. By the end of the first 45-minute period, the Lancers had already claimed the lead and never looked back, adding a third insurance goal while pitching a second-half shutout for a 3-1 win.
“When we first started out we were just unprepared and just not really focused 100%,” said Pasadena defender Dani Busta, who graduated from Crescenta Valley High this year. “Then, once they got the score in, we realized mentally we needed to come back and not let anything else [in]. Just mentally we shut them out, I think, after that.”
Busta scored the go-ahead goal in the 25th minute on a header of a loose ball inside the penalty box off a corner kick from Taylor Gore. Fourteen minutes earlier, the Lancers (1-0-1) had evened the match on a chip shot by Cassie Saavedra, who was able to control a loose ball in the goal box and poke it into an open goal.
Glendale (1-1), which had scored with relative ease when Sheila Araji’s throw in found its way to Anacker for a 38-yard blast off Lancers keeper Tatiana Sanchez’ fingertips, couldn’t mount any kind of attack for the remainder of the half, as Pasadena dominated play and outshot Glendale, 10-1, in the half, en route to a 21-3 shot disparity in the match.
“It’s a combination of Pasadena being a good team and us not having the experience and not being able to connect,” said Vaqueros Coach Jorge Mena, who got seven saves from Hoover graduate Samantha Galvan. “We have a lot of work ahead of us. We could be good, but we’ve got to find a way to be consistent once we gain possession of the ball and be able to do the transitions and get some different touches out if it. I don’t have transition that can go from the back to the front, that’s not our style.”
Glendale wasn’t able to do much to turn the tide once the second half started either, as Pasadena actually intensified its pressure in firing six more shots over the first 10 minutes of play. Three of those attempts came on good looks off of breakaways down the sideline, but the Lancers didn’t find the back of the net until Nancy Nunez scored on a breakaway assisted by Cassandra Orozco in the 76th minute.
“We played really well the remainder of the first half and in the second half,” said Pasadena Coach Randy Lilavois, a former Crescenta Valley boys’ soccer coach. “But it’s frustrating when you take as many shots as we did and didn’t put them in.”