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By Celeste Walter
Impact Imminent (Joshua Pedorza)
By Celeste Walter
The Orange Coast Pirates fought tooth and nail, though in the end they could not keep the Tigers down.
Riverside City College’s men’s soccer team was back on their game during the Oct. 3 event at Bobby Bonds Field in the Cesar Chavez community center.
The Tigers won 5-3 in a ferocious team effort. Dorian Farias’s hat trick combined with a goal by Arnulfo Sanchez, and one by Alberto Ramirez, completed the teams five goals. The game ran into overtime and the sheer determination of RCC kept spectators on the edge of their seats.
“We need to do some adjustments on defense,” Coach Francisco Melgarejo said, “they scored three easy goals we should have stopped, but didn’t due to a lack of marking up closely.”
Orange Coast is a “top team in our conference and in the state as well,” he said, “when we scored goals everything worked well.”
He felt the strong points of the team’s performance were in “passing between players, getting to the space and shooting the ball, everything worked.”
The team’s next game will be Oct. 7 against Golden West. Melgarejo said, “Golden West won against Orange Coast also, so it is going to be a hard game.”
“The team could use additional work in retaining the ball a little longer,” Melgarejo said.
“When we had position, we gave it up too easy, because, the other team was pressuring, and when they pressure the ball, you have to settle down and ice the play or ice the ball. You have to take it to one line and maybe draw up on it,” Melgarejo said.
The team has been playing great soccer.
“We beat Santa Barbara.” Melgarejo said. “We lost a few players who were red-carded, but we are picking it up.”
Sophomore Farias felt it was a good game overall.
“We need to work on marking up the men and finishing our opportunities,” Farias said, “once we do, we will take over the game.”
Sophomore Sanchez said he thought the team played well together, passing the ball around, finishing the opportunities.
“They stepped it up maintaining a good attitude,” Sanchez said. Noting this area had been a problem that caused the team to “fall back and end up getting scored on. Today we made it happen and came out strong.”
“The team could use some work on coming up from the defense to the midfield. Sometimes we don’t finish that, or they pressure us and take the ball away,” he said. “Hopefully more people will come out to support the team during the games.”
Ramirez said he felt the team worked well together, noting that “players were participating a lot and that’s what we have to do if we want to be state or lead champs.”
“The team needs more communication, that’s where we mess up,” Ramirez said. “Today the whole team came together and we played hard, and that’s why it came together.”
Freshman goalkeeper Antoine Williams struggled to ward off Orange Coast’s numerous attempts to score, though they managed to squeeze three goals through.
“Overall I feel we played very well; we just let too many goals through,” Williams said
Even though this team went through a recent realignment in players, the efforts of the RCC men’s soccer team define the spirit of the word team.
They are each a well meshed cog in this high performance machine.
