By ROY HESS | THE BROWNSVILLE HERALD
The 19th annual Brownsville ISD girls soccer tournament began Thursday and offered some good competition to all 32 teams entered in the three-day event at Brownsville Sports Park.
The tournament runs through Saturday with pool play in four eight-team groups highlighting the action Thursday and Friday.
Defending champion McAllen High is not back to defend its BISD title of a season ago, so the door is wide open for a new champion to be crowned in Saturday afternoon’s final.
One of the Brownsville teams getting off to a strong start Thursday was Brownsville Veterans Memorial, which won its first three games and capped the day with a late match against La Joya Palmview.
In its first three pool-play games Thursday, Brownsville Veterans defeated Mercedes 6-0, PSJA North 1-0 and Valley View 3-0.
The Lady Chargers’ Samantha Bodden finished the day with six goals, scoring three against Mercedes, one against PSJA North and two against Valley View.
Also for the Lady Chargers, Corina Arizmendi, Camila Trevino and Hannah Obregon each scored a goal against Mercedes. Areli Guzman added a goal to go along with Bodden’s two tallies against Valley View.
“I feel good about our team’s play so far,” Lady Chargers coach Luis Troncoso said. “The team is playing hard and trying to do the things that we practice. We’re trying to reach our goals of just continuing to win games.
“This tournament gives us an opportunity to get our new players involved (and get them some playing time),” Troncoso added. “They can have an opportunity to get in there and get better. We’re having a good start, but there’s still a lot of work to do so we can improve. Doing the little things right will help us get better every game.”
The Los Fresnos girls started Thursday 2-0 with wins over PSJA North (4-1) and Mercedes (3-0) before finishing the day against Palmview and Valley View.
Lopez bounced back from a 1-0 loss to Weslaco High to win its next game 2-0 against Donna High. The Lady Lobos played two more games Thursday.
Pace opened with a 2-0 win against PSJA High before being edged 2-1 in penalty kicks by Edinburg Vela. The Lady Vikings bounced back to win their third game 8-0 against Rio Grande City before playing Edinburg Economedes in a nightcap.
Pool-play action in all four groups starts at 8 a.m. Friday at BSP.