ULV soccer blasts past Beavers in shutout win

photo by Christian Velazco

In a winning match for the Leopards Wednesday night against Cal Tech, Alex Rodriguez (No. 8) steals the ball from Abel Navejaz (No. 9). Leopards Edgar Manzo (No. 19) and Chet Jusakul (No. 7) stand by. The Leopards defeated Cal Tech, 3-0.

by Gloria Diaz
Arts & Entertainment Editor

The University of La Verne men's soccer team faced Cal Tech, looking for its second win against the Beavers Wednesday. The Leopards were able to shut out Cal Tech with a score of 3-0.

The action started quickly as the Leopards were able to ward off the Beavers, making it onto the scoreboard first.

In the first 15 minutes of play, Stepan Karakesisoglu scored to put the Leopards up 1-0. Cal Tech's goalie dove to save it, but his effort was not enough to stop Karakesisoglu.

On a few occasions the Leopards came close to scoring on shots from both Karakesisoglu and John Helmer that missed the goal by a couple of inches.

With more than ten minutes left in the first half, the perfect scoring opportunity came for the Leopards, but a Beaver defender came from the left to knock the ball out of the path of a goal.

With that block, the Beavers thought they were on their way to stopping the Leopards, but they did not anticipate the Chet Jusakul and Edgar Manzo force.

Jusakul was able to gain control of the ball and kick it over to Manzo, allowing him to send Beaver goalie Christian Peressin diving in vain for the ball, bringing the Leopard lead to 2-0.

"When we expect to win, we need to deliver, and today was good," head coach Cres Gonzalez said. "It was nice to see some goals scored."

The second half saw much of the same action as the Leopards and the Beavers continued to collide, both teams hoping to stop the other.

Josh Miller would once again add to the Leopards attack as his breakaway goal sent the ball flying past the Beaver goalie, granting the Leopards a shut out victory of 3-0.

"We expected a win, and the guys came through with this one," head coach Cres Gonzalez said.

"We played well today; we started out real quick; we got a quick goal, and it helped to get our confidence going," senior defender John Helmer said.

Saturday brought a heated match-up between the Whittier Poets as the Leopards looked to beat the Poets as they did earlier in the season, but they could only pull out a 2-2 tie in overtime.

The first half started off strong for the Leopards as Manzo took advantage of a scoring chance and sent the ball past the Whittier goalie to put ULV on the scoreboard first.

The rest of the half saw both teams missing some scoring opportunities as the score remained 1-0.

The Poets would not let ULV take its first goal in stride, as they were able to get the ball past Leopard defenders to tie the game at 1-1 with a questionable penalty kick call. Minutes later, Mark Paterson of Whittier passed the ball to Marcus Domingo, setting up a perfect scoring chance; Domingo then took that chance and turned the score into a Poet lead at 2-1.

With four minutes left on the clock, Karakesisoglu's header goal brought the game to a tie at 2-2, sending the game into extra time. In overtime, neither team scored, and the game ended with a score of 2-2.

Throughout the game, the Leopards attempted to score 20 times, with Josh Miller leading the pack with five of those attempts.

Next up, the Leopards will travel to Claremont to face Claremont-Mudd-Scripps at 11 a.m. tomorrow and Pomona-Pitzer at 4 p.m. on Monday, which was rescheduled from Sept. 25 because of the Williams fire in the Angeles National Forest.

The Leopards will return home for their final game of the season to face Redlands on Wednesday at 2:30 p.m.