MARIO SANDOVAL (No. 7) leaps into the air and shoots the ball over Hermiston’s Esgar Avila during Tuesday’s game in Hood River. Sandoval notched an assist in HRV’s shutout win over the Bulldogs.
MARIO SANDOVAL (No. 7) leaps into the air and shoots the ball over Hermiston’s Esgar Avila during Tuesday’s game in Hood River. Sandoval notched an assist in HRV’s shutout win over the Bulldogs.
On paper, it looked like No. 1 HRV (8-0-2, 2-0 league) would have a tough matchup with No. 3 Hermiston on Tuesday, with the Bulldogs carrying a 7-1-1 record and a 1-0 league record to go along with the team’s top-three ranking.
But just as they have done with almost every other team this season, the Eagles went about their business, dismantling Hermiston’s offense, scoring goals with surgical precision, and showing that the Bulldogs’ bark was worse than their bite at the conclusion of the three-goal shutout delivered by HRV.
In a season full of wins, HRV’s defeat of Hermiston was one of the most important, considering the team’s ranking and rivalry with the Eagles.
“I feel good,” HRV coach Jaime Rivera said Wednesday morning. “I feel really good about how we adjusted after the half, particularly our midfield play. To have that ability to play the ball into the center of the field and be able to get a good pass out to the open space — that’s huge.”
All of HRV’s goals came in the second half— the result of Hermiston successfully preventing HRV from putting much of anything together in the first thanks to the Bulldog’s scrappy play and high-pressure defense that disrupted the flow of the game for the Eagles.
“They did a good job of neutralizing us in the first half,” said Rivera. “They had some dangerous plays… we were making things kind of difficult for ourselves in the first half. We weren’t very well organized. We were struggling to connect passes.”
At halftime, Rivera made some position adjustments, feeling that HRV’s lead scorer, Andrés Baeza, wasn’t getting enough scoring chances. Baeza, a midfielder, got moved to forward, Joel Garcia moved from forward to attacking mid, and Mario Sandoval was put in as a holding middie.
The strategy appeared to work, as HRV opened up the second half with a goal from sophomore striker Alvaro Ramirez in the 50th minute. Ramirez was fed a pass from senior middie Noah Noteboom at the post, and Ramirez turned in traffic to score from the center of the pitch at about eight or nine yards out to make it 1-0.
Baeza followed up several minutes later on a breakaway, drawing Hermiston’s keeper off his line, faking him out, and then slipping one in past the near post at a bad angle, while a tailing Hermiston defender pushed the ball farther into the back of the net on a failed sliding save attempt.
“He’s nonchalant; you think he’s not going to be first to the ball and he is,” Rivera said of Baeza. “Just a little move and he’s gotten rid of a defender.”
Ramirez grabbed his second goal of the game late in the half to make it 3-0 and seal the deal for Hermiston. Once again, keepers Marcos Cuevas, a senior, and Travis Running, a sophomore, collected clean sheets, with Cuevas making five saves in 60 minutes and Running recording a few of his own. It was HRV’s fourth consecutive shutout, with the last goal against the Eagles coming in a 2-1 road win over Summit Sept. 18.
Between HRV’s shutdown midfield, disruptive defense, and solid goalkeeping, HRV has only allowed three goals all season, which is not only the best in all of 5A, but the best in all of OSAA boys soccer — tied with a few other teams.
“Super proud of that, that would be our best statistic,” Rivera said.
HRV will finish the first part of its league schedule next week with a game at The Dalles Tuesday at 4 p.m., then head into the second part with a game against Pendleton that will occur at Westside Elementary at 4 p.m. on Thursday.
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