UPPER LAKE — The Upper Lake Cougars fell into an all too familiar pattern Wednesday afternoon while dropping a 4-0 decision to the Point Arena Pirates in North Central League III boys soccer action at Upper Lake.
“We’re mentally a one half team,” Upper Lake head coach Thomas Santana said. “We played great for the first 36 minutes of the first half before they finally scored. That was it. It was a totally different vibe in the second half.”
Upper Lake and the Pirates, who improved to 6-0 in the league standings, were locked up in a scoreless battle until the final minute of the first half when Junior Zuniga broke loose toward the Upper Lake goal and beat keeper Johnny Gozony in a one-on-one faceoff, driving a shot past Gozony and into the net.
The Cougars had a couple of solid scoring chances before that but were denied by Point Arena’s keeper, who made a couple of hard saves.
It was a totally different situation in the second half when the listless Cougars didn’t put together even one run on the Point Arena goal. The Pirates spent nearly the entire 40 minutes on Upper Lake’s side of the field and while Gozony was able to save a number of shots, the pressure applied by the Pirates proved to be too much and he couldn’t save them all. Jael Orsini scored midway through the half to make it 2-0, Fernando Lopez added Point Arena’s third goal at the 30-minute mark, and Christopher Ortiz put the game away with a goal at the 38-minute mark that made it 4-0.
While watching his team drop to 5-11-1 overall with four games remaining this season, Santana said the year simply hasn’t developed the way he expected, especially with a senior-dominated roster. Expectations were high after the Cougars reached the playoffs a year ago with only two seniors on the team.
“It didn’t play out for us this year,” Santana said. “I thought this team would be better, I thought this was going to be our year. This is our last year in the NCL III, I was hoping to go out with a bang.”
Upper Lake’s sports teams move up into the NCL I, joining Lake County’s other schools, for the 2023-24 school year.
The Cougars return to action Friday in Geyserville at 4:30 p.m.
