Vikings improve to 4-0 in SWYL
| Saturday, Jan 10 2009 01:54 AM
Last Updated Friday, Mar 27 2009 01:41 PM
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Centennial's Joe Gonzalez battles for the ball with West High's Alee Gutierrez on Friday. West won 2-0.
West High's boys soccer team is making sure it's no one-hit wonder -- but that mission gets much tougher starting next week.
The Vikings blanked Centennial 2-0 at home Friday night to improve to 4-0 in the Southwest Yosemite League, a year after they went from worst to first in the standings.
"We have a lot of returners and a lot of guys who were dissatisfied with how the season ended," said West coach Brock Snider, whose team lost at home in the Central Section Division II playoff semifinals last year as the top seed. "We know have the mentality that we have to defend what we earned last year."
But now the mission gets much harder.
Amilcar Escobar, the senior who scored both goals Friday for the Vikings (9-3-1 overall), has been declared academically ineligible after grades came out this week. That means he can't play the rest of the season.
Escobar was West's leading scorer and a Californian All-Area first-team selection last year.
"I think we have 12 players with goals," Snider said. "He had the most, obviously, but we'll just keep passing the balls and making sure we put it on target, hope for the best."
Escobar was downtrodden on the sideline after the game, but during it, he was the only player who could finish an opportunity. Both teams played conservatively throughout, settling for long runs and services into the attacking end.
Early in the second half, Centennial (4-5-4, 2-1) nearly struck first when a Golden Hawks free kick curled around West's wall but smacked into the near post.
"I thought we had them tonight," Centennial coach Jeff Vaughan said. "We just needed a break."
Minutes later, Escobar seized a mistake in Centennial's defensive end, headed the ball twice to himself and then buried it in the far corner of the net in the 60th minute.
Eleven minutes later, Escobar received a service from Jorge Salas and did the same thing in the other corner.
