Westmont Men’s Soccer (5-5-1, 2-3-1 GSAC) found all sorts of ways to score on Saturday in Phoenix, outpacing Arizona Christian (3-9-1, 0-6) by a score of 9-0 in a Golden State Athletic Conference game.
“As much as anything it was a response to our performance on Wednesday at Concordia,” said Westmont head coach Dave Wolf referring to Westmont’s 4-0 loss. “Arizona Christian happened to be the next team. Our guys were determined to get the bar back up where it should be. They did that emphatically today.”
The Warriors wasted no time lighting up the scoreboard. Two and one-half minutes in, Brandon Talsma recorded his first collegiate assist when he switched the ball over the defense to Sean Siemens who found the back of the net for his first goal of the year.
In the thirtieth minute, Gerald Ben scored his eleventh goal of the year to put the Warriors up 2-0.
“Gerald was on the left wing and Nana (Akyen) slipped him a diagonal through ball that Gerald finished with the right foot,” reported Wolf.
In the fifty-fifth minute, Talsma teamed up with Will Bobo to give Westmont a 3-0 advantage and start a 35-minute stretch in which the Warriors would average a goal every five minutes.
“Will got the ball at the box and Brandon made an overlapping run on the left,” said Wolf. “Will slipped him a tight little ball and Brandon finished it with his right foot to the far post.”
Less than two minutes later, Ben scored again, once more with the help of Akyen.
“Nana went on a dribble at the top of the box and found Gerald in the box on the left,” said Wolf. “Gerald slotted it past the goalkeeper from a tight angle. In fact, when he first shot it, I thought it went behind the goal. I’m not sure how he squeezed it in.”
Ben assisted on the Warriors’ fifth goal, feeding Jonathan Yeeles who scored his second goal of the year.
“That goal was a give-and-go at the top of the box,” recalled Wolf. “Jonathan played Gerald right down the middle of the field and then kept his run going. Gerald returned the ball to him first time, which put him into the box. Jonathan finished with a left-footed shot to the far post.”
Over the next fourteen minutes, Daniel Johnsen would record the first two goals of his Westmont career.
“Tanner (Wolf) took a free kick from the right-hand side and curled the ball into the box where Daniel headed it home,” said the coach of the Warriors’ sixth goal, scored in the sixty-ninth minute.
Of the Warriors’ seventh goal, Wolf reported that, “Daniel shot from just inside the box on the right-hand side and beat the keeper with a hard, low shot at the near post.”
In the eighty-seventh minute, Isaac Veenstra scored on a left-footed volley to the left post, giving Westmont an 8-0 lead. Then with just 44 seconds left in regulation, the Warriors added one more.
“Gustavo Hernandez made a run forward, got into the attacking half of the field and chipped the ball over the top to Cody (Howen). Cody beat the goal keeper on the dribble, going around him and slotting into an open goal.”
As potent as the Warriors were offensively, Wolf also touted the play of his defense. “Gustavo and Marcos (Lopez) were real solid in the center of the defense and gave good leadership to Brandon (Talsma) and Mohammad (Mehai) on the flanks. Those two young guys are coming along and getting a lot of experience playing with a couple of experienced guys.
“The main thing for us today is that we didn’t feel like we had done a very good job of closing up space against Concordia. Today, we did a really good job of that. Arizona Christian had a really difficult time playing against us because of our aggression closing up space. That was really the key factor; it produced a lot of our attacking opportunities.”
