The Half Moon Bay boys soccer team broke away from Gunn with three goals right after halftime to post a decisive 4-1 victory Saturday in the Silver Division of the Homestead Christmas Cup. The Cougars (2-0-0 overall, 1-0-0 in Homestead Cup) scored three quick goals in the beginning of the second half to defeat the Titans (0-2-0, 0-2-0).
“We knew that we could finish a little faster, and we came out looking for that chance,” Half Moon Bay's Andres Vazquez said. “Our only regret is that we didn’t play the entire game like we played the second half.”
Tied 1-1 for the majority of the first half, the Cougars pounced on an opportunity to intercept a pass intended for senior Wyatt Eberspacher to regain possession of the ball. A series of quick, precise passes moved the ball to the Titan goal, where Henry Fassinger, assisted by Johnatan Rico, put in a neat shot into the left corner of the goal to leave fans stunned at Half Moon Bay’s sudden change in pace.
“I thought it was a good game overall, particularly when we found our stride again after that drought in scoring,” Vazquez said. “We started off okay, but then slowed down for a while and gave them too many chances.”
Only minutes later, Zach Penner put in another goal — again in Gunn goalie Boot Bullwinkle’s bottom left corner — to bring the score to 3-1. The goal, assisted by Vazquez, served as another display of the Cougars’ newfound speed and agility.
Penner closed out the scoring by taking a throw-in from Kevin Perez for yet another goal to conclusively close out the game 4-1. Gunn locked down on their defense afterwards to prohibit another goal and kept the ball largely at midfield; however, the Titans’ offense was unable to penetrate far into Cougar territory to close the gap in the teams’ scores.
“Our first half was pretty good,” Gunn senior Justin MacMillan said. “However, we needed to improve in the second and just work on touching the ball and getting to those 50-50 balls.”
Half Moon Bay started the game off strong as Fassinger assisted Jose Lalo Garcia in a goal that whizzed neatly into Bullwinkle’s lower right corner. However, the Titans came to life amid the crowd’s chants of “Get ‘em, Gunn!” and returned the favor a short while later when Stephan Jensen, assisted by Arjun Parikh, shot right for Cougar goalie Nester Ruiz’s center to bring the score to 1-1.
Gunn was not able to capitalize on its newfound momentum, and the game fell into a stalemate until the Cougars went on their three-goal rampage at the start of the second half.
“This certainly wasn’t our best performance overall, but I know that we can learn from our mistakes to really surprise next week,” Parikh said.
Earlier this week, the Titans tied 0-0 in a Monday scrimmage against the Aragon Dons. Despite an agonizing struggle at the Aragon goal in the second half as Gunn tried for the goal on several repeated throw-ins and a multitude of Don breakaways toward the end of the match, both teams’ goalies easily blocked every attempt to score.
The 19th annual Homestead Christmas Cup, running every Saturday from December 1st to the 22nd, is a three-bracket, three-field tournament hosted at Cupertino’s Homestead High School. Half Moon Bay battles the Sequoia Cherokees (1-0-1) next week at 11:00 am on Field Two while Gunn will face off against the Pajaro Valley Grizzlies (0-0-1) at 9:30 am on Field Three.
