Heritage soccer team loses playoff game on penalty kicks
Heritage's Angel Villasenor gets tangled up with an opponent during Saturday's game. (Photo by Rick Rowell) By Paige Mendez, Corresp...
By Paige Mendez, Correspondent
The Heritage boys soccer team ended their season Saturday night in a 4-3 loss in penalty kicks to Covina High after a scoreless regulation and two overtime periods.
The shootout was necessary to determine the entrant in next week’s CIF-SS Division 7 finals. It was a frustrating end for the Patriots, who had won six consecutive games and finish the season with a 10-16-3 record.
Jorge Abarca took the first kick for the Patriots and found the back of the net just to the left of the Colts’ goalkeeper. Then Matthew Manrique made a goal in his turn as Covina’s first kicker.
Ernesto Pacheco and Isaac Ahmed then made the next two goals for Heritage, answered by one Covina goal to the lower right of Patriot keeper Oscar Cervantes, who then blocked the next kick, putting Heritage ahead.
Damian Cerda stepped up for the fourth Patriot penalty kick and barely missed off the top crossbar. The next Colt kick went in, tying the shootout at 3 apiece.
The last Heritage kicker was Isaac Guzman, one of the team’s leading scorers on the season. He placed the shot just off-center and it was blocked by Covina’s keeper, Axel Espinoza.
With one more made kick, the Colts took the victory.
After a mostly losing regular season, head coach William Zuazo said he was more than proud of the way his squad played in the postseason.
“This is how soccer goes. It ends like this even in the professional leagues. I told the boys I am very proud,” he said. “We honestly were kind of underdogs from the beginning here and now we’ve turned ourselves from a team into a program.”
Zuazo also explained that he has been very impressed by the way the student athletes that play for him have given so much to the team this season.
Senior Angel Villaseñor said his most notable thoughts about the team are about their overall progress.
“It felt like at the beginning we were kind of split in half between those who were trying hard and those who really didn’t want to try,” he said. “But we got to playoffs and the half of us trying were able to get everyone trying, and that was how we got this far.”
The team made Heritage soccer history by moving to the semifinals in the playoffs this season, which is something Zuazo said none of them really expected.
“We’re always a team that’s saying, ‘Well, if this had happened we could have made it’ or ‘We could have done it if this one thing was different,’” he said. “We didn’t want to be that team, but this year, all those ‘ifs’ worked out for us and I’m so proud of what we did with it all.”
Isaac Guzman moves the ball forward during a scoreless regulation play. (Photo by Rick Rowell)
