Jaguar Girls prevail 3-1 over CCS
By Ximena Fagan
The SCCS Jaguars defeated the Cochabamba Cooperative School 3-1 in the final contest of the round robin phase of the Friendship Games. The Jaguars finished with a 3-0 record, while Cochabamba finished second with a 2-1 record.
The same teams will meet in Saturday's championship game.
It was an awesome game. CCS scored their goal first in the opening minutes of the game when Aimee Torrico broke loose on the right side of the field and got off a big kick that ripped into the upper left corner of the goal. That made the score 1-0 in favor of the CCS Bulldogs. It was the first time the Jaguar girls soccer team has been behind at the Friendship Games.
The score was tied 1-1 when the Jaguars were awarded a free kick from about 30 meters out. In a tricky crossing pattern in which Fernanda Vaca Diez first faked taking the kick (but ran past it instead), Tania Landivar took the kick and booted a low, booming kick into the goal.
The Jaguars threatened several more times and kept the action mostly in the CCS end. A header on one of several corner kicks hit the goal post. The Cochabombinos also had their chances, the most dramatic occurring when a hard hit free kick came loose from goalie Karla Aguilera, but she quickly gathered it in.
The score was tied 1-1 at the half.
The second half went without any goals until a series of events following a corner kick by Fernanda Vaca Diez that, after some bouncing around, came back out to her. She faked her way past two defenders and launched a high shot that went just under the crossbar and above the goalie's reach.
Landivar made the score 3-1 with a long shot from just inside the midfield stripe that went over the goalie and curved down into the goal.
The game got quite chippy after that and tempers were at a flash point after Jaguar Andrea Soruco, the smallest player on the field, had a collision with a large CCS player who had just come into the game. Neither player was near the ball at the time. Soruco suffered several injuries and had to be carried off the field.
The game continued through its closing minutes, but the closest either team came to scoring was a Vaca Diez shot that hit the goalpost.
