Charger offense revved up and ready to go

Chris Castillo, left, greets Ivan Luna after Luna scored DP's fourth goal

Dos Pueblos’ new-look boys soccer team showed off its offensive abilities in its season-opener on Tuesday, exploding for four second-half goals in a 5-2 victory over Oxnard.

“We looked good in our attacking,” said Chargers head coach Tovi Eliasen. “I like what we were doing going forward.”

The score was only 1-1 at halftime before Danny Rowell and Johnny Fisher scored to give DP a 3-1 lead. Oxnard answered in the 76th minute to make it 3-2, but had to play a man down for the rest of the match after losing a player to a red card.

The Chargers were able to take advantage, as Ivan Luna and Kyle Schmechel scored twice in a five-minute span to close out the match.

Rowell, who also scored the Chargers’ first-half goal, is confident that this year’s Chargers have what it takes to replace the offense lost from last year’s CIF Division II runner-up team. Graduated players Rodrigo Perez and Eduardo Cortez each scored 14 times last season.

“We lost our two goal scorers from last year but we have lots of extremely talented players coming up that are putting in the work to get it done,” Rowell said. “We can accomplish a lot when we put our mind to it.”

Oxnard falls to 0-1 but head coach Eric Montijo thought it wasn’t a bad start because the Yellowjackets were right there before the red card.

“I felt we did ok,” Montijo said, “There are a couple of things we need to work on obviously.”

Danny Servin and Guillermo Che scored for Oxnard.

Dos Pueblos travels to Santa Ynez for its second game of the season on Wednesday.