Westmont Men’s Soccer sits at 1-0 in the Golden State Athletic Conference standing after defeating Hope International (3-3-1, 0-1 GSAC) by a score of 3-2 on Saturday in Fullerton. The Warriors (2-5, 1-0) jumped out to a 2-0 lead in the first half but had to add another goal in the waning minutes of the second half to secure the victory.
“I think it was the tale of two-halves,” said Westmont head coach Dave Wolf. “I thought we were pretty solid and professional in the first half. With a 2-0 halftime lead, we didn’t feel comfortably by any stretch – it was a competitive game – but felt like we had handled the situations properly. But in the second half, it definitely got away from us. As solid as the first half was, the second half was shaky and they were able to draw level. I give the guys a lot of credit for coming back and winning the game.”
Westmont’s first goal came in the fifteenth minute of play, the result of a set play.
“The first goal was off of a corner,” reported Wolf. “We’ve had lots of success on corner kicks this year. I think it is the fourth one we’ve scored. Nana (Akyen) served the ball into the near post and Ben Gordon made a great run and met it perfectly and misdirected it into the goal.
With just 12 second left before halftime, the Warriors struck again, this time off the foot of Isaac Thompkins.
“Jordan Correa got free on the right,” described Wolf. “He served a ball into the box on the ground. Daniel Guzman actually got the first challenge on the ball. It squirted lose in the box largely through his effort. Isaac was there to finish it off.”
The second half was indeed a different story. Fifteen minutes in, Matthew Howard put Hope International on the scoreboard by converting a penalty kick. It took just 31 seconds for the Royals to score again. This time Howard passed the ball to Zach Hoffer who chipped the ball over the Warrior keeper.
“Hope changed their shape and moved their personnel around,” said Wolf. “Our awareness of that was not very good. We were also a little bit sleepy as well. When you are up 2-0 at halftime, you can be pretty sure the home team is going to take a stab at it. We seemed unprepared for them to come out and go at us. We talked about it at halftime and anticipated what they were going to do, but for whatever reason it just didn’t get in our system very well.”
Both teams continued to battle with Westmont producing the winning goal in the eighty-first minutes.
“The third goal was the result of some very hard work by Isaac Thompkins,” said Wolf. “He ran a ball down that was headed out of bounds and was probably one of those balls that you wouldn’t have faulted him if he had just let it go. I believe it was going out of bounds for a throw in for us. However, he worked to get it, turned and served the ball into the box. Ryan Cadigan just rose up and powered a header into the goal. It was a textbook header that capped off an important fight back for us.”
Westmont will next take the pitch at home on Wednesday when they host #17 The Master’s (7-1-1, 0-1) at Thorrington Field beginning at three o’clock.
