SOCCER : Banning Stuns Garfield to Take Title

The old saying is that it’s better to be lucky than good, and in the case of Banning High School’s boys’ soccer team, that would be true.

Banning defeated the heavily favored Garfield Bulldogs, 1-0, in the CIF 4-A soccer final last Saturday at Weingart Stadium at East L.A. College.

Sophomore forward Juan Delgado scored the game winner for the Pilots with 15 minutes left in the game, catching the Bulldog’s goalkeeper Angel Martinez at the edge of the box.

The Pilots’ junior midfielder Rene Ramirez set the play up with an assist when he spotted Martinez out of his goal and lobbed a high pass over the goalkeeper to a lunging Delgado, who cleanly headed it in.

The game-winning play actually had its origins early in the match when Pilot defender Rogelio Rodriguez launched a rocket from 35 yards out and the ball barely missed, passing over the crossbar by less than a foot. That play, too, caught Martinez out of position. “It was a play that we have been working on all week,” Banning coach Frank Sandoval said. “Luckily, we got a break and it went in.”

The goal caught Garfield by surprise, as the Bulldogs had dominated the game until that point by getting chance after chance at the Banning goal.

But the Bulldogs would never score, and that was because of senior Lufs Morales.

Morales frustrated Garfield’s star forwards Romeo Cordoba and Juan Robles again and again with perfect positioning and surehandedness. He was credited with 10 saves, but he was far busier than that, foiling a total of 19 scoring opportunities by Garfield’s forwards.

Garfield also hurt itself by delaying its shot attempts. The tendency to pass instead of attempt to score was evident early, as twice Cordoba broke free alone on goal within the first five minutes of the game and failed both times to launch a shot.

“I guess it was nerves,” said Garfield coach Gerardo Campos. “We talked at halftime about how we were passing the ball too much. We had to shoot more.”

Campos kept the Bulldogs’ assault fresh, rotating Oscar Fuentes, Omar Romero, and Gerardo Gomez on the wings to assist the attack.

“They had so many good players,” said Sandoval. “I had to keep all my starters in the whole game. Our bench wasn’t as strong as theirs.”