6-2 Win Over Bishop

Your Cate Rams traveled up the 101 today to face the Bishop Diego Cardinals in an important match up. A Ram victory today would secure their 3rd consecutive Tri-Valley League Title and the 4th in the last 5 seasons. The starting eleven featured senior Quincy Thorne between the sticks. The defensive back line was anchored by seniors Charlie Dorion, Kamil Abdul-Nafeo, and Alex Gallegos, along with sophomore Nicolas Wright De la Cal. The midfield trio consisted of senior Dimash Anuarbek, alongside juniors Teke Meisel, and Nolan Montoya. Leading the attack was seniors George Marin, and Kiy Barry, joined by junior Miles Thompson.

We knew going into this match that the Cardinals would try to take advantage of their short and narrow home field. They came out aggressively in order to get on the scoreboard first. We did exactly that in the 8th minute when Dimash dispossessed a Bishop player at midfield, he looked up and saw the Cardinal keeper sitting at the top of the 18th yard box and proceeded to launch a long range guided missile that found it’s target in the back of the net to give us an early 1-0 lead. With early momentum on our side we went right back to look for the second goal. Bishop adjusted and played team defense to keep our advantage  to the minimum. In the 25th minute, the home team took advantage of a defensive error and tied the score.

We knew it wasn’t going to be easy but we pushed ahead looking to regain the lead. The playing surface made it challenging for us to dribble and pass with the same efficiency that we are used to and in the 37th minute Bishop scored once again to take a 2-1 lead at the half.

At halftime, we discussed the adjustments we needed to make and at the start of the 2nd half we came out more composed and began to get in a good rhythm that allowed us to create more scoring chances and started to attack their backline . In the 53rd minute, it paid off when a hand ball was called in our favor, George stepped up and drilled it in the right upper corner to level the score. In the 58th minute, Kiy made a streaking run from the right side, entered the 18 yard box, was fouled by a Bishop defender,  even though he stayed on his feet, we were awarded another PK. George stepped up once again and deposited the ball in the left upper corner to give us our first lead of the day, shift the momentum in our favor, and opened the scoring floodgates. We continued to press forward and in the 66th minute, Teke and George combined on a beautiful give and go that allowed Teke a one on one with the Cardinal keeper and he calmly lobbed the ball over him into the back of the net to stick a dagger in the Cardinals hope of an upset and give us a 4-2 lead. George endured some harsh smack talking from several Bishop players so he was not done yet. He added two more goals in the 70th and 82nd minutes to finish with a total of four in the day, silenced his critics in the process, extended our lead to 6-2, and secured our third straight Tri-Valley league title.

Today we found ourselves down on the scoreboard at halftime for the first time this season. We made some mistakes that put us in that position BUT we never panicked and made the necessary adjustments that helped us fight our way and secure the victory. We have some things we need to clean up and improve on as we look ahead to the postseason but before we do that we’ll need to come back and do it again tomorrow at Dunn.

We will finish our road game series tomorrow to play our last league game of the season vs Dunn at 3 pm. Thank you to our supporters that came out today. We appreciate you.