JV Boys Soccer Championship

ONE ON ONE -- Jaguar star Santiago Paz loads one up while Cambridge goalie Mauricio Soto prepares. Carlos Paredes, Cooperative

Knight defense finally breaks
Late explosion gives Jags 3-0 victory

The Cooperative junior varsity boys soccer team scored three times in 13 minutes at the end of the game to win the junior varsity championship against Cambridge Thursday on their home field.

For much of the game it looked as if the recent epidemic of "tie fever" or "empatitis" that has gripped the varsity division might have spread to the junior varsity as the two teams were locked in a scorelesss duel that neither team had come all that close to breaking.

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UP THE LADDER -- Cambridge goalie Mauricio Soto went as high as he could for Jose Sanchez' looper.

Carlos Paredes, Cooperative

The tie danger ended as evening fell when Jose Sanchez got off a high, looping shot that just made it over the head of Knight goalie Mauricio Soto as he tried to back up, and then bounced into the goal. The goal seemed to break some sort of logjam, and the little Jaguars quickly found ways to break through the four-fullback defense Cambridge had used to stifle them for much of the afternoon.

A few moments after Sanchez' goal, Santiago Paz took the ball up the left side of the field and rifled a long kick that skipped into the right side of the goal.

Shortly after that Esteban Sauto uncorked a real screamer from outside the penalty box that seemed to still be going up when it hit the back of the net. The Jaguars nearly added a fourth on another "looper" that got over Soto's head again, but this time a defender raced in and bicycle-kicked the ball out of harm's way.

For Cambridge the irony was that the Cooperative goal barrage came right after it had made some of its best offensive efforts of the day, with Knight Herless Diaz making a couple of clever dashes into the Jaguar zone.

Cooperative had also made some threatening rushes, but until Sanchez' goal the shots by both teams had either gone wide, high, or right to the goalies, Soto and Jaguar Eduardo Ribera.

The victorious Jaguar line-up also included Eduardo Ribera, Manuel Saavedra, Hyum Kim, Rafael Sakuma, Leonardo Landivar, Jorge Zankiz, Josue Abuawad, Juan Carlos Laguna, Camilo Avila, Federico Berjano, Jose Antonio Mozza, Ezequiel Chavez, Agustin Velasquez, Jose Salvatierra, and Sebastian Papadopolous.

The Cambridge line-up included Rodrigo Justiniano, Adrian Gamarra, Kevin Pulis, Leonardo Sanchez, Gustavo Denis, Federico Rocco, Diego Abastaflor, David Li Tan, Juan Carlos Paniagua, Anthony Salvatierra, Diego Bejar, Marlon Castillo, Diego Melgar, Pablo Piovesan, Tony Lee, and Nicolas Dagnoni.

HAIL TO THE CONQUERING HEROES -- JV Boys Soccer Champions 2008, Cooperative School Carlos Paredes, Cooperative