BY KEVIN LU | SPECIAL TO THE MONITOR
EDINBURG — The Edinburg Vela girls soccer team used an early goal to beat PSJA Southwest 1-0 in a Class 5A bi-district playoff match Saturday at Cats Stadium.
SaberCats sophomore Cherylen Chavez scored the only goal of the game in 9 minutes into the opening half. She took a pass around midfield, took the ball past a defender, outran another defender and played the ball around the Javelinas goalkeeper before knocking it into the net.
“It was a good through pass to Chery,” Vela coach Hugo Leal said of what got the play going. “It was a good run. She took out the goalie and she scored.”
After the game, a scuffle broke out in the handshake line. Coaches and teammates needed to separate players as they yelled at one another.
“I guess there was some comments at the end, so the ref decided to take two girls out. One from their team and one from our team,” Leal said. He wouldn’t identify which of his players got the red card, but confirmed one of his girls will miss the area playoff match against Gregory-Portland next week.
A strong wind at Cats Stadium played a part in Saturday’s game. It blew south to north, giving Vela an advantage in the first half and shifted to PSJA Southwest in the second half. Each team had just one good chance at goal going against the wind.
“The wind at the beginning, it was helping us,” Leal said. “The second half, it was killing us.”
The SaberCats missed an opportunity in the fourth minute to score. The Javelinas keeper couldn’t corral a shot, and Chavez unsuccessfully fired two rebounds from 10 yards. The first was into the goalkeeper and the second went wide right.
PSJA Southwest had a pair of chances to tie the match with the wind at their backs in the second half. Alyssa Mendoza’s shot went left of the net in the 45th minute, and Lizbeth Cantu’s ball in the 53rd minute was pushed into the crossbar by Sabercats keeper Mayra Ibarra.
Vela could have iced the game in the final minutes, but after Chavez took a pass behind the defense, Javelinas goalkeeper Saira Treviño to made a nice diving stop to preserve the 1-0 score.