Boys soccer dominates Nighthawks, falls to Komets

By Joe Naiman

Ramona High School’s boys soccer team split its first two games of 2012.

The Bulldogs traveled to Del Norte High School on Jan. 4 and returned home with a 5-0 victory, but Ramona’s Jan. 6 trip to Kearny High School resulted in a 1-0 loss.

“We just need to be able to put teams away,” said Coach Michael Jordan.

This is Del Norte’s first season with seniors.

“Really good up and coming team, some really good talented players, but we just jumped on them right away,” Jordan said. “We just took it to them and scored early and scored often.”

Five minutes into the game Andy Garcia scored the game’s first goal on a penalty kick.

“That really set the tone,” Jordan said.

In the 12th minute Abraham Cabrera sent a corner kick to Garcia, who faked a pass back to Cabrera before shooting the ball into the net.

“It was nice to see them convert something that we’ve worked on in practice,” Jordan said. “We were on a roll from there.”

Adam Dolan’s pass to Ricky Rodriguez allowed Rodriguez to score the game’s third goal, and Dolan scored the final goal of the first half with an assist from Carlos Blanco. Blanco scored the second-half goal after taking a pass from Garcia.

Jesse Bonilla recorded the goalkeeper shutout for Ramona. The Bulldogs used a 4-4-2 formation with Jose Valencia playing sweeper, Carlos Bustos as the right back, Connor Maruna playing left back, and Ali Aparicio as the stopper.

“It was beautiful to watch. They played possession,” Jordan said. “If we play like that we can beat any team in the county.”

That means playing both offense and defense. Ramona’s defense held Kearny to two shots, but one of those was the game’s only goal on a breakaway after Ramona was unsuccessful in clearing a ball.

“If we can keep our opponent to one goal or less a game we’re going to win a lot of games if our offense does what it’s supposed to do,” Jordan said.

Ramona had seven shots on frame against the Komets, who scored the winning goal in the second half. The split of the two games during the first week of January gave Ramona a record of 7-5-2 entering the Bulldogs’ Palomar League opener Jan. 17 at Rancho Bernardo.

“We’re going to get back at it this week, and we’re going to try to correct some things,” Jordan said.