No wonder the Dos Pueblos girls soccer team turns to Erin Ristig in a pinch.
Ristig was clutch on Saturday for the Chargers, somehow connecting on a 30-yard laser-beam in the waning minutes of a 1-0 Channel League win over San Marcos.
“I just had the ball and I couldn’t really completely see the goal because the lights were there, but I just decided to take the shot,” Ristig said after the game.
The goal was the difference in a much-desired league game for both teams, played at SBCC’s La Playa Stadium in a make-up of last Tuesday’s rain-out.
San Marcos' Victoria Uribe tries to keep Dos Pueblos' Marina Plesons in front .
“Erin’s like the person that we want to give the ball to when we need it,” described Chargers head coach Molly Imel. “When there’s seconds left, and it’s, ‘who do you give it to?’
“We give it to Erin and she gets the job done.”
The Royals were actually the team applying the most pressure in the second half and forced Dos Pueblos keeper Meagan Bellefeuille to make four saves while winning the possession battle.
“We dominated the game quite frankly I thought,” said Royals head coach Lloyd Biggs. “It was going to be a sheer piece of brilliance or a mistake and it was a sheer piece of brilliance.
“That’s what makes soccer such a great sport and such a cruel sport because you can dominate games and still lose. That was tonight I think.”
The Royals almost salvaged a point in the 88th minute when a redirected crossing ball got past Bellefeuille. As it was about to cross the goal line, Kristen Witchey slid in to knock it clear of the goal’s mouth.
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“”I tried to get my hands on it but wasn’t so lucky and Kristen came behind me as any good sweeper does and saved my butt,” said Bellefeuille, a team captain.
After the game, Imel made sure Witchey was on the stat sheet.
“That was our second goalkeeper, she needs to be credited with a save,” she said only half-joking.
Witchey and the DP defense have recorded shutouts in six of their last seven games. Danielle Zola and Amber Altavilla were strong in support on Saturday.
“A shutout is a really big deal to me, especially against San Marcos,” noted Bellefeuille, who went to San Marcos as a freshman. “It’s always good to have a goose egg on our side.”
Both sides had chances in the first half.
Ristig gave DP two chances with well-placed crosses from the right side. The first skipped across the mouth of the goal but nobody was on the far post to finish. The second bounced off a player to Claire Matthews, whose shot went wide-left.
San Marcos’ Jenny Martinez had the half’s best chance for either team. She put an unsuspecting 25-yard blast on target that forced Bellefeuille to make a leaping save, only able to push the ball over the crossbar for a San Marcos corner kick.
In the second half, the Royals sent Bellefeuille diving several times.
It started with a sliding save of shot from Lizzy Willett. Then Missy Robertson took an unexpected shot from 35 yards out that was hard to handle cleanly for Bellefeuille, who fell on top of the loose ball an instant before a San Marcos player arrived to knock it in.
“They’re a really good team and they had a lot of opportunities so it was just lucky that we got it in,” Ristig conceded.
The three points moves Dos Pueblos (2-1-1) into a first-place tie with Santa Barbara, which has played one less league game. Dos Pueblos has its second contest with the Dons on Thursday and faces Ventura on Tuesday.
“I have friends on that team and they’ve been doing really well and working hard so credit to them,” said the Royals’ Martinez.
San Marcos (0-3-1) is tied with Ventura with one point each. The Royals can bring the league closer on Tuesday with a win at first-place Santa Barbara.
“You just have to keep working hard and try to keep your team pushing themselves at a high level and looking at each game like it’s a new game,” Martinez said.
