Page 9 - Sanger Herald 1-10-19 E-edition

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SANGER HERALD * PAGE 1B * THURSDAY, JANUARY 10, 2019
Boys soccer team vows to continue battling all season
By Mike Nemeth
Sanger Herald
With the first game of the regular season completed just minutes earlier and an unsatisfactory 2-1 loss on their record, Sanger’s Apaches got a stark piece of advice from their head coach.
“Every one of these games will be like this,” he said. “You’ll have to fight.”
Coach Alex Gutierrez didn’t issue an reprisals after that Jan. 4 match at Tom Flores Stadium. He didn’t lecture. In fact, he and his assistants praised the boys varsity soccer team, which a number of fans in the stands had said is infused with talent this year.
“There’s always a winner and loser,” Gutierrez said. “You gave it everything you had. The ball didn’t want to go into the back of the net for us.”
Arch rival Madera, also Division II and in the County Metro Athletic Conference, played with just enough tenacity and skill to hold off the offensive might Sanger
Mike Nemeth / Sanger Herald
Sanger forward Luis Villegas takes the ball to the goal against rival Madera on Jan. 4.
tenure as coach. The level of play since competition began in mid November with a 3-1 win over Sunnyside has improved, Gutierrez said. A lot.
“It hurts because they played so well,” he said. He said even in a loss, these Apaches continued playing hard and smart, not letting themselves become discouraged.
To the team that night, Gutierrez said, “I’m proud of the effort. I’m proud of the fight. I’m proud of everything you did. We fought. Everybody fought.”
Junior Luis Villagas scored for Sanger with about 2 minutes remaining in the first half, tying thegame.“IsawIhada chance so I shot it,” he said, reflecting on that moment. He nearly had another that would have been his second of the night. “That’s what we hoped for.”
Still, he wasn’t consumed by frustration. The Apaches that night were disappointed but hardly beaten.
“I’m proud of my team,” Villagas said. “We lost. But
it was a well-fought loss. We need a calm mind and a cool head. The more we get down and anxious, the worse we’re going to play.”
Senior Hunter Reick nearly headed the ball in for a goal with about 12 minutes remaining in the game. “I was trying,” he said. “We just couldn’t finish. We hit the (goal) post twice. We came out with intensity. We were hungry.”
Reick said they’ve got one overall goal, winning the league.
Saul Sanchez made a prediction. He also nearly got a goal that night. “We’re going to get them at their house,” he said of Madera. Sanchez he will score on a free kick. “That’s going to happen,” he said.
And Sanchez ended the interview with this final comment about his teammates. “A lot of people are stepping up,” he said.
The reporter can be contacted by email at sangerheraldsports@gmail. com or by phone at the Herald at (559) 875-2511.
By Mike Nemeth
Sanger Herald
With about 4 minutes left, Roosevelt built a 41-29 lead on Sanger’s Lady Apaches after the Rough Riders’ Quierra Murray nailed a layup on a fast break.
While some teams may have faltered or let the lopsided score deflate their spirits, that wasn’t the case at the Coach Dean Nicholson Gym at Sanger High on Jan. 2. The Apaches’ Taylor Roth had just hit two from outside the three-point arc to rally her team, and freshman guard Elise LeBeau had stolen the ball and scored to end the previous quarter.
Sanger fought back. Senior Cu-Nisha Mitchell stole the ball with about 3 minutes left and scored, igniting cheers from a crowd that included numerous alumni, various fans and members of the Washington Academic Middle School teams and the junior varsity girls team, which had destroyed Roosevelt 63-24 just before the varsity game.
Mitchell did it again on a Roosevelt turnover, executing a perfect fast- break layup and pulling Sanger to within seven points.
“I really wanted to win,” Mitchell said after the game. She said she thought to herself, “This game, it’s a home game, and I have to start stepping up. Now or never.”
She did. And so did fellow senior Anelise Lopez, who nailed a three-pointer a minute later. LeBeau scored with 14.6 seconds on the clock, and the game ended with a 45-40 final score. Roosevelt won.
The run put a scare into Roosevelt, but the visiting Fresno team, also Division III, held on defensively despite losing Lesly Aguilar, who fouled out after contributing 17 points and 21 rebounds, and another top guard to injury.
Rough Riders coach
run at them,” he said. “We tend to wait until our backs are completely against the wall until we dig in.
“We have to trust what we have to do.”
Assistant coach Sam Zavala said team chemistry has improved. “They’ve made a lot of progress,” she said.
Roth, a sophomore, said her team’s offense is OK. “We need to play more. We’re playing as a team but not to the best of our ability,” she said. “We give up a lot of baskets, mostly inside the paint.”
Yet, she said that at the beginning of the game. The Apaches defense at times smothered Roosevelt’s plays and caused quite a few turnovers and ill-timed passes on the part of the Rough Riders’ offense. The Apaches had 14 steals to the Rough Riders’ 10. Four of those were Mitchell’s, and she had a team high 12 rebounds as well 14 points.
Mitchell said she hadn’t been as intent on scoring in previous games as she felt she could have been. “I just felt like I wasn’t my 100 percent,” she said.
She changed that.
And Lopez had said before the game that more of the team has to contribute to scoring to avoid excessive defensive pressure on one or two of them on a hot streak. To some degree, that happened against Roosevelt where a couple more successful baskets would have made the difference.
David Ramos, a lifetime Apache fan and former player, watched the game that night. He said with the team’s talent that by the end of the season, “We should be better than .500, which gets us into the playoffs. And I believe the coaches can take us there. So this young team can get the experience of the post season, which is what we need.”
Campbell closed his comments to the team with a look ahead. “Anything can happen from this time on,” he said. “We’ve got to play better defense and be more patient on offense.”
The reporter can be contacted by email at sangerheraldsports@gmail. com or by phone at the Herald at (559) 875-2511.
threw at the Coyotes. The press came after Madera sophomore Jonah Hill scored his second goal of the evening with about 22 minutes remaining. A header nearly tied the score off a Jason Corrales free kick, but the Madera goalie made the save.
Steam rose from Levin Thompson, a senior defender, as Gutierrez
gave his post-game talk. Thompson took off his jersey as he walked to the locker room, not paying attention to the 40-something degree temperature.
“We got cheated,” he said, still a bit out of breath from the hard-running game. “We played our hardest. Sometimes it doesn’t go your way.”
However, Thompson said he and his team will harness the emotion from the loss when it plays Bullard, another CMAC team, on Wednesday. “We’re all going to use this in the next games,” he said. “We have something to prove.”
These Apaches intend to make a mark this year, the second in Gutierrez’s
Lady Apaches ramp up their intensity
Sanger wrestler wins
Mike Nemeth / Sanger Herald
Cu-Nisha Mitchell taks the ball to the basket against Roosevelt on Jan. 2 at home.
Jerry Taylor still wore a big smile after the game. “We just get pumped up to play Sanger,” he said. “It’s a rivalry. We had to step up. And it’s been that way the past three years. It’s a good rivalry. I love it.
“They make my team better.”
The boisterous atmosphere amongst the crowd toward the end of the game made it appear more like a playoff game than the final preseason match. The regular County Metro Athletic Conference schedule began Jan. 4 against another arch riva, Madera, and the Apaches won decisively dominating
the entire game. Final score was 65-42. The Coyotes had beaten Sanger in the Valley championship game at Selland Arena by one point in March 2017.
“They brought it the fourth quarter,” said Desirae Vazquez, a former Apache who’s now an assistant coach for the junior varsity girls team, referring to the Roosevelt game. “They played with heart. They didn’t give up, that’s for sure.”
The two teams had met earlier in the preseason. The Rough Riders rallied in the second half against the Apaches in the Selma Shootout on Dec. 1, winning
70-64 after outscoring Sanger by 13 points in the third and fourth quarters.
Mallory Scott, the team’s other freshman, said she wanted to make a statement, winning the game and making up for the last loss. “The next time,” she said.
Apache head coach David Campbell told his team after the game that each of them has learned to trust each other on the court, a big improvement from the start of the preseason. He said, however, they must now learn to trust in the plays and game-time lineup alterations made by the coaching staff. “We made a
Mike Morales photo
Sanger wrestler Merijah Morales won her 106-pound weight class in the Napa Valley Girls Classic tournament, considered a preview of the state meet in Visalia on Feb. 21-22. The meet on Jan. 4 and 5 at Vintage High in Napa attracted more than 140 schools and more than 50 competitors in Morales' weight class, said Mike Morales, her dad. "She won four of her matches by pin and one by decision of 19-8," he said via text. "It was a great tournament for her. No better way to prove yourself. It was a pretty exciting weekend to say the least."