By ROY HESS, Staff Writer
Brownsville Sports Park always seems to be a good home away from home for the Porter Cowboys in soccer.
That trend continued Friday for the Cowboys at BSP as they captured a 3-0 victory against a short-handed Pace squad in District 32-5A action.
Porter played its two 32-5A games this week at BSP because the seating is limited right now at its new, on-campus artificial turf field, which was christened with a ribbon-cutting ceremony last week.
The new field at Porter is ready and already has been used for junior varsity games, but the seating is not quite adequate just yet. Also not yet complete is the fencing surrounding the field.
The Cowboys (7-2, 21 points) defeated Lopez 3-1 on Tuesday at BSP and followed it up with Friday’s 3-0 triumph at the same site over the Vikings (3-6, nine points). Trailing 1-0, Pace drew a red card 16 minutes into the second half and finished the match with only 10 players.
“These are championship (type) games (against our Brownsville rivals) that we have to win,” said Marco Don Juan, a senior midfielder for the Cowboys. “Little by little, we’re progressing. We’re more together and more united, so we’re stronger now than we were in the first round of district.
“I see us getting better and better game by game,” Don Juan added.
Porter led 1-0 at halftime Friday and added two more tallies late in the second half to make it a decisive win, even though the Cowboys missed a penalty kick and had a shot go off the crossbar.
Midway through the opening half, Porter’s Alexis Armendariz broke out of a cluster of Pace defenders and beat the goalkeeper one-on-one with a shot from about 10 yards away to make it 1-0.
Pace suffered its red card in the 56th minute on a hard foul.
Porter missed its penalty kick wide to the right with about 13 minutes remaining. With eight minutes left, Porter had a shot go off the crossbar, and a minute after that, Pace had an apparent goal negated on an offsides call.
Porter’s Agustin Pizano, a sophomore reserve off the bench, scored on medium-range shots from the left side during the 76th and 78th minutes to increase the lead to 3-0.
“We’re playing better soccer as the season goes on,” said Anthony Cuellar, a senior central defender for the Cowboys. “We want to stay focused on our goal of winning back-to-back state championships. These two wins (against Lopez and Pace) help us get ready for the teams we have coming up.”
Porter is expected to play its games next Tuesday and Friday on its new artificial field on its campus.
GIRLS GAME
PACE 1, PORTER 0
In the second game of Friday’s 32-5A doubleheader at BSP, Kryssie Rivera scored for Pace barely six minutes into the match and her goal stood up the rest of the way to give the Lady Vikings a much-needed victory.
“It’s a key win for us, and unfortunately, it came against Porter, but we have to win when we can regardless of who it might be against in this tough district,” Lady Vikings coach Jesus O. Villarreal said. “It was good for us and not so good for them.
“The district is very tight,” Villarreal added. “We’re just taking it game by game and picking up points here and there where we can.”
The Pace girls improved to 6-3 with 15 points in 32-5A. Porter slipped to 4-5 with 13 points. Lopez went into Friday’s action leading the district at 7-1 with 20 points.
Rivera’s goal on a crossing shot from the left side early in the game was all it took. It was the ninth goal in district for the junior forward who has started since she was a freshman.
“This game was something we had to really consider (winning) after we had just lost (2-1 in overtime Tuesday) to (Brownsville) Veterans,” Rivera said. “A win like this is something that’s going to motivate us to keep pushing as we try to make it to the playoffs. It feels good to get this win.”