Goalkeeper Jake Wright, of Rancho Palos Verdes, will blog for 100 Percent Soccer this season providing an inside look at the Cal State Northridge men’s soccer program. Wright was a two-year starter at Peninsula High and is entering his sophomore year at Cal State Northridge. This summer Wright played for Orange County Blue Star of the United Soccer Leagues Premier Development League.
In his second post Jake looks back on the first week of the college soccer season:
Coming into our first regular season game against Georgetown last Friday afternoon, it looked like from practices, and our scrimmage at Cal, that we were ready to go.
However, it turned out quite the opposite. With the searing valley heat beating down at kickoff, it seemed as if things were looking up for us as we had a few good looks at goal within a few minutes.
But, the momentum quickly changed in favor of Georgetown via a fluke goal. A quick turnover in our back line led to a quick chipped ball over the top towards a Georgetown forward. As our keeper Kevin Guppy came out to get it, it took a bad bounce off his chest right into the back of the Georgetown forward and into the goal.
It seemed as if there really wasn’t any energy on the field after the goal although right after half time, our best chance of the match came from a great through ball that resulted in a 1v1 breakaway for our central midfielder Milan Radovic. Unfortunately, the keeper came up with a huge save to keep the score 1-0. Despite out shooting the Hoyas 8-1, we suffered our first loss of the season.
Not only did we lose a tough game, but we lost two great players to injury in the first half. Both senior Devin Deldo and sophomore Rafael Garcia went down with knee injuries and were on crutches by the end of full time; a huge loss for us and both are doubtful for the two games this weekend.
As most sports fans know though, it’s how you respond to a rough game that defines a team, and that is exactly what we did Sunday against Alabama A&M.
We came out with a lot more energy and dominated play right from the get go. Senior Ben Cox found the back of the net just before half time and junior Sung Kim put the game away in the 70th min. A great effort by the whole team gave us our first win of the season to put us 1-1-0 on the year.
Hopefully we can get the job done this weekend also as we take on Cal State Bakersfield on Friday night at Titan Stadium at Cal State Fullerton, and then on Sunday afternoon we meet UNLV.
Go Matadors!
