Royal boys slug Warden, 7-0
Abraham Medina, left, sneaks up from behind as Royal teammate Alonso Hernandez battles a Warden player for the ball during a 7-0 win for the Knights.
ROYAL CITY — By a surprising score, Royal High knocked off Warden last week in SCAC soccer, 7-0. The Knights followed up with a 3-1 victory over Naches.
The victory over Warden was not surprise, but the score was. The Cougars started the season among the SCAC favorites. As things stand now, Connell, Royal and Wahluke are the top clubs in the SCAC, east and west.
The win marked the conclusion of the first half of league matches. After the Naches defeat, the Knights had a 9-1-1 overall record.
“We got a perfect start by picking up a goal just 30 seconds into the match,” Coach Jens Jensen said.
Warden regrouped and gave the Knights a handful of threatening moments following the goal. But the Knights changed their formation a bit to pick up three more goals before halftime.
“In the second half we tried to lock the field down and make sure that we limited the minutes on everyone’s legs,” Jensen said. “In doing so, a number of players came off the bench with a head of steam, and we finished winning 7-0.
Royal’s goals were scored by Abel Dominguez, Jose Ponce, Alex Contreras, Michael Rojas and Xavier Machado (3). Contreras (2), Ponce, Oscar Castro and Israel Cortez had assists.
The non-league conquest of Naches was a stiffer test, especially in the first half. The Rangers forced the Knights to turn the ball over and play their best defense.
“We had a number of good chances early that we should have done better with,” Jensen said. “The inability to put a team like Naches down early makes it difficult because they look to take advantage of set pieces, aerial balls and long throw-ins while doing their best to create confusion and foster mistakes by the opponent.”
The Rangers pressured the Knights into a mistake in organization and clearing the ball that resulted in a deflected ball ending up in the Royal net. That made the score 1-0 at the half.
The Knights responded immediately in the second half. At 1:36 of the second half, Juan Ojeda scored unassisted. Four minutes later, Israel Cortez did the same.
With an assist from Alex Ramos, Michael Rojas added an insurance goal at the 63:47 mark.
“We made some adjustments, and were growing in the match going into halftime, but we finally started to see rewards in the second half by adding sustained pressure on the Naches defense and getting a pair of goals to put us up 2-1,” Jensen said.