Reset for ‘resilient’ HRV boys soccer

Hood River Valley lost Thursday to Franklin, 3-0 and tied Hillsboro 1-1 on Sept. 17.

“We felt good about that outcome,” said coach Jaime Rivera, as it came against a top-ranked Class 6A team.

In the coming week the Eagles also have a home game against Ridgeview, a road contest at Crook County, and another home game against Redmond between now and Oct. 3 — see schedules, below.

“Since Sept. 12, we’ve already played four games. That’s a pretty good load of games, including a Saturday game at Corvallis,” Rivera said.

“Right now our focus is LaSalle,” Rivera said Monday. “It’s the number one (5A) team in the state but that doesn’t change anything for us. We’ve been playing top teams through our non-league schedule, so for  us it’s regrouping after our loss to Franklin, to focus on the things we can improve on: It’s apparent out defense is pretty solid, but that (3-0) line is cause for concern. We’re focusing on scoring some goals, getting the ball into the opponents’ penalty area and putting pressure on defenders and getting chances to score.”

Against Hillsboro, Rivera said, “we played some of our beset soccer.” The Eagles scored 10 minutes into the game and Hillsboro scored the equalizer in the second half.

Given Hillsboro’s number-one ranking, “we came in as number-one ranked team in the state. We can in pretty hyped, and we’d played Hillsboro well in the past. We know it’s a solid program, it always increases the level of play when you play better games against teams like that.”

The team had an opportunity to go up 2-1 when, just in front of Hillsboro’s goal, junior Omar Escobedo fielded a rebound off the Spartan goalkeeper and had “a nice clear shot at goal but the keeper made another fantastic save. He somehow he got a foot on it,” Rivera said.

As to Franklin, Rivera said, “we’ve been resilient in the past and we can bounce back from what we feel is a bad performance.

River said that to improve on the way the Eagles pressure opponents’ defenses, the squad has moved from a 4-2-2 “diamond midfield,” to a 4-3-3, with four defenders, three center midfielders and three forwards.

“That puts pressure high up near their goal to create scoring opportunities, putting pressure on them when they have the ball,” Rivera explained.