McALLEN — In the huddle before Saturday’s match between city rivals McAllen High and McAllen Rowe, McHi head coach Patrick Arney laid out the early game plan.
“We score one in the first 10 minutes,” he told the girls. “We score two in the first 15.”
They scored two – in the first nine.
The state-ranked No. 4 Bulldogs held a 3-0 lead at the half and rolled to a 4-1 win over Rowe in a mutual District 31-5A opener. Rowe came into the match ranked No. 14 by the Texas Girls Coaches Association.
Freshman Savannah Ruiz scored from the far post off a corner kick from senior Melanie Saldaña in the eighth minute and senior Briana Claudio found the top shelf from 35 yards out a minute later as McHi set the pace and the tone for the first half.
“Obviously they got off to a very good start with the two goals and we gave up two goals on corner kicks,” Rowe head coach John Martinez said. “We’ve been struggling on corner kicks and that’s my fault. You can’t give a good team like them those mistakes.”
Saldaña and Ruiz connected again on a corner with 5:21 remaining in the first half for a commanding 3-0 lead.
“We had been working on a lot on corners during practice and finishing so I ended making the back post run like I was supposed to and it ended up working out,” Ruiz said. “We’ve been doing a lot of passing drills and patterns so I think that helped today to weave around their defense.”
“We have practices dedicated to passing and we work on corners during warm-ups before a game a lot. I’ve been taken them for four years,” Saldana said. “We position ourselves In a certain way and know who is going to be where.”
The Bulldogs dominated possession throughout most of the match and had multiple scoring attempts on goal. However, during a 20-minute span in the second half, Rowe’s physical play put them in position to score. Freshman Camila Gil drilled a shot off a touch by Natalia Vela from 25 yards that found the top corner and cut the lead to 3-1 with just about 30 minutes remaining in the match. It was Gil’s 17th goal of the season
“Our mindset going into the game was to play our style, but we didn’t start off that way,” Martinez said. “I told them at halftime to go in there like it’s the start of the game. Pressure them and be physical and let’s see what happens That is our style, but we’ve got to put those 20 minutes into a complete game against a team like this.”
Following that goal, the style of play slowly started returning toward McHi’s favor.
“I think, at first since, we were up three goals we may have laid back a little bit and then snapped into it and realized we needed to push and get back into it and stop being lazy. That’s when we started connecting more and passing again. They are aggressive and we needed to connect our passes and shoot.”
“I think it’s an easy thing to get out of our game and try to be more physical. ‘They’re pushing us so we need to push back,’ that one upsmanship,” Arney said regarding the span when Rowe scored and kept possession. “Getting that goal back at the end helped.”
Late in the half, Claudio made a charge for the net with only one defender on her and Rowe’s goalkeeper coming out of the box. Claudio punched a pass toward the middle of the field before she and the two Rowe players collided. A streaking Mallory Henderson picked up the ball in stride and notched the team’s fourth goal into an empty net.
“They have that great teamwork combination together but we worked on that this week because we thought that was a place we could get Rowe. Mallory is fast enough that if we put the ball into a certain space she’s going to get to that ball first but it’s a lot of teamwork together. It’s good self awareness and all the girls have very good special awareness.”
McHi improved to 6-0 overall and 1-0 in the district. Rowe dropped to 6-1-1 and 0-1 in district.