SAN MATEO, Calif. — With just a minute remaining in the first half, the Serra soccer team looked to be in control of its first home WCAL game of the season, leading Valley Christian with back-to-back goals.
Warriors junior Benjamin Asiaba fielded a pass 20 yards from the goal, juked a Serra defender and snuck a shot into the net to tie the game before halftime on a remarkable individual effort.
Five minutes into the second half, Asiaba scored again, rebounding his own missed penalty kick and scoring what proved to be the decisive goal in a 3-2 road victory, Valley Christian’s first win in nearly a month.
“Truth is, I don’t know how we won that game,” Warriors head coach Gary St. Clair said. “We have a very unbalanced team with a few really good players.”
Asiaba was clearly one of those top talents, with his pair of goals defining the cloudy afternoon at Brady Family Stadium. Valley Christian (3-1-1, 1-1 WCAL) was playing for just the second time in a month and withstood numerous Padres chances in the second half to protect the lead.
“The key thing is to keep things tight, and in the second half we turned this into a geographical game,” St. Clair said.
Second-ranked Serra (7-2, 1-2) had no shortage of chances to tie the game after Asiaba’s second goal, including a pair of corner kicks in a five-minute sequence, but could never break through.
“Them starting the half well and getting the third goal before we did changed the outcome of the game for sure,” Padres head coach Mike Keller said.
Frustrations boiled over for the home side in the final moments, with a yellow card and a red card issued to Serra players arguing with the referee after the final whistle.
Despite surrendering the first goal in the 17th minute when Alexandre Martins found a deflected ball in front of the net, the Padres scored a minute later when Drew Alexander finished off a Xavier Van Loben Sels lead pass and went on top in the 24th minute as midfielder Dylan Joudieh was on the receiving end of a perfect Alexander free kick into the box.
Joudieh could have easily had a second or even a third goal, hitting the post in the 13th minute. He also had a header off a Leonardo Gianoli free kick in the 60th minute that went high.
