Behind a hat trick from senior forward Auli Hanks, the Mingus Union High School girl’s soccer team defeated the visiting Dysart High School Demons 6-3 Thursday, Dec. 8, at Bright Field.
The Marauders, who went down 1-0 after little more than 10 minutes into the game, scored four straight goals to take a 4-1 lead.
“It was a good win.” Marauders head coach Angela Strobel said. “We didn’t play our best game, but that’s just because we’re really worn out. We’ve got a tough schedule where we’ve been playing a lot of games, but still we were able to pull it out so that was good.”
Less than five minutes into the game, Dysart had a clear chance at taking the lead when a pass into the penalty area was not cleanly cleared out, and the ball ended up flashing across the face of the goal in the six-yard box. No one was home to tap the ball in.
The Demons controlled most of the play during the first 10 minutes. Junior Stephanie Gutierrez made a nice individual play, dribbling past the last Mingus defender 20 yards out and shooting high to freshman goalkeeper Zoey Arwine’s left.
But the Marauders immediately responded.
Right off the whistle following the Dysart goal, Hanks brought the ball down field, where one of her dribbles deflected off of a defender and fell right back to her. Moving to her left, she chipped the ball over Demon goalkeeper Callista Garcia from eight yards away.
Throughout the game Mingus knew how to take advantage of Dysart’s defensive tactics to create easy scoring opportunities. The Demon defense gambled on winning a one-on-one battle on the sideline, but Marauder freshman Felicia Bueno knew to loft the ball to her teammates streaking down the other side of the field.
For Mingus’ second goal, which came four minutes after the first, Bueno did just that, finding fellow freshman midfielder Marli Urueta at full stride in behind the Demon defenders.
“My girls and I were able to find how their defense was set up,” Hanks said. “We were able to find a way to get around that. I got two good balls from Felicia Bueno that messed up their defense.”
The goal of the game came at the 21-minute mark of the half. Hanks had the ball about 35 yards away from goal, and recognized an opportunity.
She spotted Garcia a little too far out of her goal, and booted the ball high in the air, bombing in over the retreating goalkeeper’s outstretched arms.
Dysart had a couple more chances to score in the final 10 minutes of the half, most notably when Gutierrez saw a turn-around right-footed shot from 17 yards away strike the post.
At the 7:17 mark Mingus netted its fourth of the half, when Urueta scored from a poor clearance after a corner kick. The ball fell to her at the left side of the penalty area, and she used her left foot to shoot high and out of the goalkeeper’s reach.
Despite the 4-1 lead after 40 minutes, Strobel thought her team had not played to its potential.
“The first half we were kind of not playing our game,” Strobel said. “We usually pass a lot better, we connect a lot better.”
During the second half the Marauders continued to find more opportunities to score goals, but only managed two more. Defensively, Mingus would give up two more goals but their offensive output was strong enough to ensure victory.
“We have a good defense,” Hanks said. “We have a couple of girls who are out right now. We had to put our [midfielder] back there and then some girls who have never played defense, and they did really good back there.”
Sixteen minutes in, a dangerous Demon corner kick found its way to senior Nicole Atencio, who scored with her left foot to bring the deficit to 4-2.
Once again Mingus was able to open the lead back to three, this time senior Yadira Romero being the one to find the net. The ball came loose just inside the edge of the penalty box, and Romero managed to poke the ball past the sliding defender and Garcia, who was on her way out to contest the ball.
Gutierrez finished off her double for the visitors with a bar-down shot from distance with 8:56 remaining to cut the Marauder lead to 5-3, but it would be too little too late.
Hanks finished off her hat trick in fine fashion. With under five minutes left, Mingus earned a free kick 23 yards away and to the right of goal. Hanks stepped to the ball and sent a strike into the high left corner of the goal, immediately throwing her headband and arms into the air, the crowd and bench bursting with elation.
Despite it being her team’s second game in four days, Strobel was happier with the second half.
“I think the second half looked much better, and the fact that they can turn the game around even though the score may or may not reflect it, but they played so much better,” Strobel said. “I think that’s a strength, they can reflect on how they’ve been playing and change that.”
To round out the week with its third game in four days, Mingus traveled to Coronado High School the following evening, falling 1-0.
The Marauders again hit the road on Tuesday, Dec. 12, to take on Estrella Foothills High School, but results were not available at press time.
At 3 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 17, they will finish their three game road trip at Mohave High School.
