First-year Hood River Valley girls soccer Coach Leonor Lopez Agiurre has been around the game long enough to know the value of communication and trust among teammates.
She also knows that a few fortuitous bounces can go a long way, as well.
HRV sophomore Julia Rowan was the beneficiary of those bounces Sept. 28, when she scored a hat trick in leading the Eagles (3-4 overall, 1-1 league) to its first-ever Northwest Oregon Conference win, 3-1, at Centennial High.
The win enabled Hood River to rebound from its league opener vs. visiting Canby two days before, when the Cougars squeaked out a 1-0 win. In that match, very few bounces went the way of HRV, which had numerous shots on goal but nothing to show for it on the scoreboard.
“Our team’s getting a lot more comfortable and confident with each other, so our team chemistry is doing really, really good right now,” Lopez Agiurre said. “It’s really strengthening our communication on the field and it’s allowing for those set plays to happen to get those goals in the net.”
Hood River controlled the play against Centennial, taking a 2-0 halftime lead. Rowan’s first goal came midway through the first half. Frosh Yareli Hernandez was about 35 yards out in the middle of the field where she one-touched the ball to the outside.
Sutton Le Fevre beat her defender on the edge and ran onto the ball in the right corner and sent a crossing pass toward the middle. The ball scooted in front of the Centennial goalie, but the keeper failed to clear it away. The ball went through the goal mouth where Rowan, angling in from the left, ran onto it and tapped it into the back of the net with her left foot.
The second goal came late in the first half. Sophomore Ocean Rivera sent a through ball to the left side, where Rowan ran onto the ball. She tried to cross the ball with her left leg toward the middle, but the ball glanced off a Centennial defender who was marking Rowan. The ball ricocheted closer to the goal and on the same angle Rowan was running. The defender hesitated slightly after she was hit by the ball, allowing Rowan to cleanly strike the ball with her right leg from 20 yards over the outstretched hand of the Centennial keeper.
Rowan, who scored two goals in a match earlier this season, completed her hat trick early in the second half. An HRV throw-in from the right sideline toward the middle wasn’t cleared by the Centennial defense. Rowan was standing about 20 yards in front of the goal and simple beat her defender and the keeper to the ball for an easy one-touch, right-foot score.
“We had most of the possession during the entire game,” Lopez Agiurre said.
Centennial scored its lone goal about 10 minutes later when HRV failed to clear the ball near the 15-yard mark on the left side. A Centennial player took a shot, the ball glanced off an HRV player and caromed the opposite way frosh keeper Valeria Miramontes was leaning.
HRV had a good chunk of the possessions against Canby, but the Cougars made an early goal stand up for the win. “That was an intense match. We had a lot of chances,” Lopez Agiurre said. “We just couldn’t get the ball in the net.”
The coach said she expects more of the same, as far as quality of opponent, as the Eagles meander their way through the rest of their Northwest schedule. Up next is league-leading and sixth-ranked La Salle Prep (4-3-2 overall, 2-0 league), which comes to HRV for a 5 p.m. match on Wednesday.
“It’s definitely going to kind of decide how the rest of our season is going to go,” Lopez Agiurre said. “The competition level from here on out is going to be basically the same (good).”
Hood River has one more nonleague match, Oct. 10, when former Intermountain Conference foe Pendleton (3-4-2) comes to the Gorge.
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