A fantastic season was eight minutes from ending.
Dos Pueblos’ boys soccer team found itself trailing 2-0 at San Fernando on Thursday in the 72nd minute, but scored two goals in two minutes and won 4-2 in a penalty-kick shootout to advance to Saturday’s SoCal Division I Regional Championship Game. There, the Chargers will face a Paramount team which they beat earlier in the season 1-0 at the Atascadero Tournament.
Brandon Tangel rose above the pack and used his head to bury a Kenny Lara corner kick in the 72nd minute for DP’s first goal. Two minutes later, Lara sent in a free kick that bounced through untouched. Rodrigo Perez made a diving effort to keep it inbounds, flicking it up in the air. Eduardo Cortez put it away on a header to tie the game.
Regional play calls for one 15-minute sudden-death overtime, and coach Tovi Eliasen said that the Chargers had all the momentum in the period. Ot one point, the Chargers found the back of the net and began celebrating before realizing that offsides had been called.
DP (16-6-8) made all four of its penalty kicks in the shootout while San Fernando (21-3-2) sent two off of the post. Tangel sealed the victory with the final of the four scores, leaving the team with a 4-0 record in shootouts on the season.
Eliasen said that the Chargers played well in the first half but were still out-shot 9-5 by an “impressive” San Fernando side. The Tigers’ Martin Martinez scored on a long ball sent over the Charger defense on a counter-attack in the 11th minute. The 1-0 score held up until halftime.
Dos Pueblos out-shot the Tigers 7-1 in the second half, but San Fernando converted on its one shot in the 49th minute as a ball was bounced around a horde of players in the box and eventually pushed in.
At that point, according to Eliasen, the Tigers began taunting and the game got chippy.
“I thought our guys had a tremendous response to the taunting and acting and time-wasting,” he said. “They didn’t get frazzled — they just played harder. I was so proud of that.”
He was also proud of the “tremendous” defensive effort turned in by Danny Rowell, Casey Donahue and Robert Bertha.
Bertha, a freshman, came in for the injured Kyle Schmechel in the 20th minute and did a nice job against solid Tiger attackers the rest of the way.
After being beaten by Santa Barbara in the CIF title game last week, Eliasen said that winning the regional crown would be a sweet way to end the storybook season.
“Our season has been an incredible success, no matter what happens. I could have said the same thing four games ago,” he said. “These guys are a special group and I think they’re playing as well as anybody out there and I think it would be a wonderful thing for them to come out with a title of some kind.”
Kickoff at Warren High School in Downey on Saturday is set for 6 p.m.
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the little team that could.
the little team that could.