Page 4 January 26, 2017 Hawthorne Soccer Struggling in League Play By Adam Serrao The Hawthorne Cougars boys’ soccer team has had high expectations to live up to throughout the course of this season. After a relatively disappointing go of things last year when the Cougars only won three Ocean League games and finished in fifth place in the standings, there was still optimism surrounding the team coming into this season. One of the main reasons for that optimism had to do with the emergence of sophomore forward Oskar Gomez. Behind Gomez, Hawthorne jumped out to a 7-1-3 record to begin the year. Recently, however, some tough Ocean League opponents and a string of bad luck has dampened the mood around a team that could suddenly end the regular season near the bottom of league standings looking up. As a freshman, Gomez got his start for Hawthorne last year and gave head coach Yury Najarro and the rest of the team a great deal of hope. Gomez has lived up to the hype this season, scoring 10 goals for his club and leading Hawthorne on offense. Despite the sophomore’s great production and the team’s hot start to the year, the Cougars have fallen upon some bad luck of late. Following a 2-1 overtime win against Beverly Hills to begin league play, Hawthorne has now lost two games in a row to Santa Monica and Culver City respectively. In addition to Gomez, senior defender Adrian Hernandez has been hot for Hawthorne as well. Hernandez scored the deciding goal for the Cougars in overtime that eventually led to Hawthorne’s 2-1 victory over Beverly Hills in the Ocean League opener. Sophomore goalkeeper and team captain Salvador Ontiveros has been a standout player for the Cougars this season too. Ontiveros held a first place Culver City team to just one goal after the Centaurs had scored six in their previous two games combined. Unfortunately for Ontiveros and Hawthorne, that one goal was good enough to win the match in the final few minutes of a game that saw Hawthorne’s offense go completely cold and get shut out. Hawthorne’s loss to Culver City was the team’s second loss in a row and third in the last six games. The Cougars will look to get back on track and start a hot streak when they continue league play this week with a matchup against Lawndale followed by a rematch against Beverly Hills. If Hawthorne is fortunate enough to pull out a win against Lawndale, it will move up a slot in the standings and into good positioning to make a run at Santa Monica and Culver City for the top spot before the conclusion of the regular season. Lawndale High Despite a very disappointing start to the regular season, the Lawndale Cardinals have used Ocean League play to keep the team toward the top of the standings. Two straight victories to start the regular season had head coach Angel Mendez and his team looking optimistically at the rest of the year. Unfortunately for the Cardinals, poor offensive play led to the team losing eight out of 10 games heading into what always seems to be a very challenging league play schedule. That challenging schedule began with a matchup against the first place Culver City Centaurs. The Centaurs look to be the best team in the Ocean League this year and did well to prove that fact with a 1-0 shutout victory over the Cardinals. Despite their loss and their recent offensive struggles, Mendez and his Lawndale team held their heads high and remained confident. That confidence led to a dominating performance against El Segundo last Wednesday afternoon on the road. Senior Osvaldo Garcia led the team with two scores, while Mario Perez and Justin Islas each chipped in with one for a 4-0 shutout win. The Cardinals will look to keep their offense hot as they enter into a home matchup with their rivals from Hawthorne this week before the team hits the road to take on the second place Santa Monica Vikings. Inglewood High The Inglewood High School boys’ soccer team has been having a tough time this year in both the regular season and Bay League divisional play. The Sentinels have yet to win a game this season, but despite their struggles have managed to come away with two ties that very easily could have ended in the team’s favor. Inglewood’s struggles have unfortunately carried over into league play where the team has lost its first four games, including two shutout losses against Palos Verdes and Redondo Union. In those two games, the Sentinels were outscored 13-0 and, together with an inefficient defense, have gotten zero offensive production this season. The only saving grace thus far for Inglewood has been that it shares a division with the Morningside Monarchs, who figure to finish in last place in the Bay League. The Monarchs have lost every game they’ve played in while only scoring a total of two goals this season. Inglewood will take on Morningside this week on the road in a game that the team needs to win to stay out of the bottom of the Bay League standings. • Lightning Bolts Enter L.A. Area By Adam Serrao It may initially sound like it, but this isn’t about the nasty winter weather that has been raining down upon Los Angeles over the last few months. It is, however, about the city’s newest professional football team. That’s right, the Los Angeles Rams now have a new neighbor that will eventually become a roommate after the new, nearly $3 billion stadium is finished in Inglewood. Almost two weeks ago to the day, chairman Dean Spanos announced that the team formerly known as the San Diego Chargers will move to Los Angeles and become known as the Los Angeles Chargers. With the highly controversial decision, Spanos brought a second NFL team to the nation’s second-largest media market for the first time since 1994. It used to be the Rams and the Raiders who shared the Los Angeles area some 23 years ago. While the Raiders moved back to Oakland and seem to now be destined for Las Vegas, the Rams left for St. Louis only to come back and call Southern California home once again. Many people seem to forget, however, that it was the Chargers who were born in Los Angeles in 1960 only to move down the 5 freeway into San Diego the next year when Barron Hilton made it so. Hilton probably had no idea that the Chargers would ever be back in Los Angeles, but alas almost 60 years later the Bolts now boast a new beginning. There are two sides to every story and that remains true with the tale that led up to Spanos decreeing in statement that “today, we turn the page and begin an exciting new era as the Los Angeles Chargers.” The first side of the story is the one of which fans down in San Diego are currently most passionate. They can’t believe that the team the Spanos family bought in 1984 that gave the city of San Diego a unique identity, along with their trademark powder blue jerseys, has now abandoned them. The other side of the story, however, is the one told by Spanos himself--the chairman who has been fighting with San Diego city officials for almost 20 years now to get a new stadium only to be basically laughed at while any ideas of funding were quickly and consistently thrown out of the window. Once Spanos officially announced the team’s move, fans took to Chargers Park in San Diego to put their disappointment on display. Some set jerseys on fire while others threw banners to the floor as fans passionately found ways to react to the news that had ripped their football team away from San Diego. Even Chargers quarterback Philip Rivers, who has publicly been a proponent of the Chargers remaining in San Diego, had his say about the move. “I’m a little numb about it all,” he explained. “It hasn’t really settled in. I hope that when the dust does settle that the people that have been fans here for a long time can still watch a game on Sunday and go, ‘Hey, that’s our quarterback.’” While a great number of fans obviously were and will continue to remain sick about the move, Spanos had almost no other choice. Like with all things in sports, beyond the game being played, there is also a business to be run. That being said, Spanos had no other viable business decision but to move to Los Angeles once the other NFL owners and the City of San Diego denied him any additional help with funding. Spanos’ allotted time given by the league to make a decision had run out. The City of San Diego was giving Spanos absolutely no help and even a measure that would have taxed local hotels higher to help pay for a new stadium was shot down. Spanos was down to two decisions: Either move to Los Angeles to join the Rams, or be forced to indefinitely keep his business at San Diego’s Qualcomm Stadium, which opened in 1967. If you’ve ever been to Qualcomm Stadium, you can certainly see why Spanos chose to move. The venue is completely outdated and needs an entire top-to-bottom renovation. The arena is also consistently filled with fans of opposing teams and has even drawn the ire of current NFL players who may love the city but also feel like they might as well be playing at a high school venue. StubHub Center in Carson may not be much better for the time being. The Chargers’ new temporary home seats less than 30,000 people, so tickets will almost assuredly be at a premium as well. That’s not to mention the fact that the Chargers will still struggle to attract and maintain a home crowd to support their team. Once the new stadium is built in Inglewood, however, the Chargers will move into one of the nicest stadiums in the world and will see their value as an organization rise through the roof. NFL commissioner Roger Goodell put it perfectly when in a statement he said, “Relocation is painful for teams and communities. It is especially painful for fans, and the fans in San Diego have given the Chargers strong and loyal support for more than 50 years, which makes it even more disappointing that we could not solve the stadium issue. As difficult as the news is for Chargers fans, I know Dean Spanos and his family did everything they could to try to find a viable solution in San Diego.” The pain will certainly remain for most Charger fans who have held the team near and dear to their hearts for so long. Winning, though, cures all pains in the world of sports and now it is up to Spanos to find a way to field a successful team so that the Chargers can officially begin to put their relocation to Los Angeles in the rearview mirror. • – Asixlion@earthlink.net Every Visit our Website www.heraldpublications.com issue always available online! New Issues/Old Issues • Out-of-town? Read the Herald newspapers online • Interested in an article from a prior date? See it online • Excited about an ad, photo, or article? Refer your friends, family and associates to the website, so they can see it too • Want to read the Torrance Tribune or other Herald newspapers not in your area? All available on our website! Check it out! www.heraldpublications.com
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