PLACENTIA – El Dorado boys soccer coach Steve McManus looks up at the scoreboard after a game and wonders how the Golden Hawks won.
El Dorado is 31 games into the season and coming off a Southern Section championship, yet the Golden Hawks, he said, still look timid and tired at the start of a match, lacking any confidence. If someone were to look at their body language, he said, they’d think the Golden Hawks were losing.
For the first 35 minutes of Thursday’s CIF Southern California Regional semifinal, Salesian of Los Angeles dominated, preventing the Golden Hawks from putting a single shot on goal.
But in the 37th minute, Tyler Johnson converted a penalty to give El Dorado the lead, and after that the Golden Hawks looked like a different team, cruising to a 6-0 victory against the Mustangs at Valencia High to extend their unbeaten streak to 18 matches.
“Once we score a goal, teams come at us and we are quite good at defending,” McManus said. “They do have good team spirit and that could take you a long way in high school.”
The Golden Hawks (19-7-5) will play Montgomery of San Diego (18-3-4) in the championship on Saturday at Valencia. The time still has to be determined because McManus is also coaching in a club tournament in Las Vegas at noon on Saturday. This is the farthest that an El Dorado boys soccer team has advanced in school history, McManus said.
“We have strarted the last 10 games awful in the first half. The first half they battered us,” McManus said. “We realize that we were a bit fortunate tonight.”
Moments after Robert Arroyo scored off an 18-yard free kick to give the Golden Hawks a 2-0 lead in first-half stoppage time, a Salesian (18-8-3) player was sent off, drawing a straight red card for a dangerous tackle.
The Mustangs were already short-handed, missing six starters who were with their club team in Las Vegas, and had to play the entire second half a man down. The Golden Hawks took advantage of the extra space as Bryce Veronese scored twice while Aaron Tebay and Nathan Baranack each added a goal to set the final margin.
This is the second time in nine days that El Dorado has beaten Salesian. They edged the Mustangs, 3-1, in the semifinals of the CIF-SS Division 3 playoffs.
“They are the best team that we have played all year, but the third goal right after halftime killed the game,” McManus said. “I was a bit sad actually because I didn’t want it to end that way. They are a good team and I didn’t want it to get that far. Obviously, we will take it.”
