ROY HESS | Staff Writer
SAN BENITO — Regardless of Mother Nature’s fickle weather whims, the soccer season goes on in the Rio Grande Valley.
There was constant light rain with cool temperatures in the 50s on Tuesday night when the San Benito Greyhounds played host to the Weslaco East Wildcats for a non-district match at Bobby Morrow Stadium.
While playing conditions could have been better, they also could have been far worse. When it was all over, the Greyhounds were just glad to walk away with a 1-0 victory.
Arturo Arratia, a junior forward, was the man of the match for the Greyhounds. His shot from the left side during the 14th minute found the mark. San Benito’s 1-0 lead provided by Arratia stood up the rest of the way.
“It wasn’t just me, it was my team,” Arratia said. “Without them I wouldn’t be here (talking about the winning goal).
“We’re just trying to get into our form for the season,” he added. “It feels good to win this game, because after every time we play, we feel more like a family. That’s what we want is to do something different (and better) for this school (in soccer).”
The Greyhounds were the ones doing the most on the attack and almost came up with a second goal with eight minutes left. A San Benito player sent a header toward the goal from close range, but the Weslaco East goalkeeper tipped the ball away at the last moment.
“You know, it’s always a good thing to win, especially on a night like this,” San Benito coach William Huerta said. “This is soccer weather. These are the nights you want to win on.
“We still have a lot of work to do,” he added. “(Still) it’s a win that feels really good. We (now) get to work on the little things we need to do day in and day out. We’ll go back and watch film to see what we need to fix (from this game) to get ready for the tournament coming up later this week and the other games we have ahead of us before our district starts (on Feb. 1).”
Last week, the Greyhounds went to the 37th annual Brownsville ISD Boys Soccer Tournament/Showcase, where they won two games and lost two. Starting Thursday, they’ll be playing at the inaugural South Texas Futbol Showcase with games at Los Fresnos, Brownsville Hanna and Brownsville Rivera.