Coach Tovi Eliasen felt that his Dos Pueblos boys soccer team was better than its opponent, Granite Hills, in the morning match of the last day of the Cats and Hounds Tournament. The Chargers fell 1-0, but bounced back to defeat a much tougher Santa Maria squad 2-1 in the afternoon.
DP couldn’t convert on a penalty kick early in the first match and hit the crossbar just a few minutes after that. Granite Hills scored the game’s only goal in the 14th minute.
Dos Pueblos' Rodrigo Perez gets set to make a long pass. (Photo by Tom Modugno)
“That kind of rattled us a bit,” said Eliasen. “We dominated the match and our guys thought we probably should have had two or three goals. The guys were really disappointed after that.”
They turned the disappointment into something positive, however, by beating the Saints in the fifth-place game. This time, DP converted in the second minute when Jonathan Fisher tapped in an assist by Jonathan Cruz.
“Cruz was the man of the match today,” said Eliasen.
Santa Maria got one back in the 12th minute on a bouncing ball that the Chargers felt was a handball, but Cruz put away the game-winner in the 35th on an unassisted missile from the right flank.
“We’ve never gone this far in this tourney while I’ve been here. With the early loss it was tough to get over that mentally but we did… I think we’ll be a force to be reckoned with when it comes to the Channel League,” said Eliasen.
The Chargers are now 3-1-1 after having won just seven times all last season. Next up is an away tilt at Oxnard on Tuesday.
