Heading into its home game against No. 32 Moon Valley on Friday, Feb. 19, the Mingus boys soccer team knew that while it was not likely to improve too much on its No. 19 rank, a solid win would be necessary for the Marauders to hold their position and have a chance at moving into a playoff spot over the season’s final week. Mingus got exactly what it needed.
Starting roughly halfway through the first half, the Marauders hit the visiting Rockets with an offensive barrage and opened up a 5-0 lead. Moon Valley did get a late goal but it was nothing more than cosmetic, as Mingus came away with a 5-1 win.
“It was nice to have a decisive win, absolutely,” Marauders coach Dave Glick said. “As a coach, that’s a position I always want to be in. We had a 4-1 win over Bradshaw Mountain, but once you hit that number five, you can kind of relax a little. The 4-0 was nice but once you get the fifth, there’s no way that the other team is coming back from that.”
The game’s turning point came 25 minutes in. The Mingus offense had some opportunities but was by-and-large out of synch early on, which led to a scoreless tie.
Then, with 14:33 remaining in the opening half, Marauders sophomore Wyatt Pallares fed senior Sebastian Pedroza a pass, setting him up with a one-on-one opportunity against the Rockets goalkeeper. Pedroza’s shot found the back of the net, giving his team a 1-0 lead. From there, Mingus never looked back.
“Wyatt assisted me with that goal,” Pedroza said. “We were doing a really good combination of passes. We managed to get the first goal and break the ice.”
After assisting on the first goal, Pallares put the next two in the back of the net himself. His goal with seven minutes left in the first half gave the Marauders a 2-0 lead at halftime. Then, 15 minutes into the second half, he gave Mingus an even bigger cushion with his second goal of the night.
Pallares attributed that to believing in his abilities and taking chances when the opposing defense gives him an opening.
“I’m just confident with my skills,” he said. “I take the opportunities I have. I see if I can get through and if I can, I go.”
While Pallares narrowly missed getting a hat trick, his teammates padded the Marauders lead over the next several minutes. Junior Hgiovani Lagunas scored with 21 minutes left to put his team up 4-0 while fellow junior Roberto Gudino added another goal with 12 minutes remaining to close the scoring out for his team.
“I feel like it’s like that every game,” Pallares said. “If we don’t have a goal, we don’t do anything. We have to get a goal so we get our offense going.”
“I’m really proud of them. It was nice to have our offensive engine working tonight,” Glick said. “That’s something we’ve definitely been lacking.”
Glick added that a change to the lineup helped the Marauders add more offensive pressure.
“A part of it is that we did change the lineup a little bit as far as our formation is concerned in the front. We always had two guys, sometimes three guys, pressing the line. We were just getting stuck. Giving us more width and depth on the front end definitely helped our passing game. We were able to break up the defense that way. It was good stuff.”
The win moved the Marauders to 5-4 overall. Mingus is also 5-4 in 4A Conference play and 3-3 in the 4A Grand Canyon Section. The latter mark will not change, as both of the Marauders’ remaining games are freedom games.
Being No. 19 before the win over Moon Valley had Mingus just outside of the playoffs. Without play-in games this year, the Marauders will need to find their way into the top 16 over the season’s final two games.
Unfortunately for Mingis, the Marauders were tripped up in their next game, losing by the same 5-1 margin to Tempe on Tuesday, Feb. 23.
The season finale is a home game on Tuesday, March 2, against Peoria at 5 p.m.
