Rick Alves/ La Vista
By Rebecca Hext
Staff Writer
The Mira Costa girls soccer team dominated Leuzinger High School on Jan. 17 by a score of 8-0. Even with the backups playing for most of the game, the girls controlled the tempo and pace to continue their 16 game winning streak.
Within the first ten minutes of the game Costa had already got a point on the board. Junior midfielder Yvette Sandoval scored the first goal on a break away to give Costa an early lead. Shortly after, Sandoval scored Costa’s second goal off an assist from junior midfielder Rachel Oster.
“I saw an opportunity to score and open up the marker and I took it,” Sandoval said. “Even though the opposing team [Leuzinger] wasn’t very strong, I feel like this game benefited us.”
Around the 25th minute of the first half, junior midfielder Allie Campbell crossed the ball to sophomore forward Savannah Sartini who deflected a shot off the goalie for Costa’s 3rd goal of the game. Before long, Campbell got control of the ball once again and scored a break away goal, giving Costa a 4-0 advantage over Leuzinger.
“Playing against Leuzinger is not historically one of the most competitive Bay League games,” Campbell said. “But it helps us work on the basics of our game and gives everyone on the team a fair chance to get some ample playing time.”
In addition to scoring Costa’s third goal, Sartini managed to score once again on a solo break away for a fifth goal. The shot was deflected by one of Leuzinger’s defenders and the ball rolled past the goalie into the net.
“I thought that today’s game was a good chance for us to practice good sportsmanship against our opponents,” senior defender Alli Ford said. “Even though we might have been able to score more in the second half, we chose not to.”
To finish the half and increase their lead, both freshman midfielder Mckenna Doyle and freshman midfielder Reily Edmonds scored on unassisted breakaways.
“Today was a great effort by the whole team,” Edmonds said. “We were settling the ball down, connecting passes, and I just managed to find an opportunity to score from the left side and took advantage of it.”
As the second half began the Leuzinger coach took Costa’s offer of ending the game early by only playing a 20 minute second half, instead of the normal 40 minutes. In addition, Costa’s head coach Patty Perkinson decided to only play with eight players on the field for much of the second half of the match.
“I thought we were able to boost our confidence with this win today,” Perkinson said. “We also got a lot of girls playing time that haven’t gotten a ton of it so far this year.”
The last goal of the game was scored off a corner kick from Ford to Sartini. Sartini headed the cross in by Ford to bring the final score of the game to 8-0.
“Even though we had an amazing game today we are in for a tough week next week,” Sartini said. “We need to not get ahead of ourselves and take this season one game at a time.”
The girls now improve their record to 3-0 in Bay League and 16-0-1 overall. The girls’ next league game will take place today at Palos Verdes Peninsula High School against Palos Verdes.
