Thursday was a night of second chances for the Ridgeview boys soccer team.
On each of the Wolf Pack’s two goals in its win over Bakersfield, a player got an extra attempt on a nearly identical play after coming up empty moments earlier.
Late in the first half, the second time Luis Gil Maravilla had a cross come in from Chris Chavez Sanchez on the right wing, he chose not to dump the ball off to a teammate, but to fire a well-placed shot inside the right post himself. That was the first goal.
Then Joshua Bryant doubled Ridgeview’s lead in the second half when he was able to keep a ball under the crossbar when shooting from close range, after skying a similar shot two minutes earlier.
BHS had comparatively few opportunities in its 80 minutes at Griffith Field, and those two goals were enough to give Ridgeview a 2-0 win.
The Wolf Pack, which entered the night ranked No. 3 in the Central Section on MaxPreps, moved to 3-0 in South Yosemite Valley League play, after both teams entered Thursday night with identical 10-1-3 (2-0 SYVL) records on the year.
Both offenses showed playmaking potential Thursday night, but particularly in the second half, Ridgeview was far more easily able to produce quality shots on goal.
Early defensive sloppiness, exemplified by some rather cavalier passing around his own goal, put the Wolf Pack in danger of being scored on in the opening moments.
In the fifth minute, one such sequence led to a steal by BHS junior Israel Cadena. Cadena set up Daniel Fagoso for a close-range shot, taken with the outside of his foot, but the low effort was bobbled and then gathered by Ridgeview goalie Jonathan Salazar.
The Wolf Pack responded with a threatening run of its own two minutes later, and an adept touch by Bryant put him past the goalkeeper, but his shot sailed far too high.
As both teams settled into the game, it became an even matchup contested primarily around midfield for almost half an hour. Ridgeview finally broke through on a pair of penetrating, high-speed attacks by Chavez Sanchez up the right wing, the second of which gave Gil Maravilla his open shot to put the Wolf Pack up 1-0.
Ridgeview initially sat back a little after taking the lead. Early in the second half, BHS senior Antwa Rodriguez dispossessed Oscar Villagrana and found freshman striker Mekai Dallas out wide to the right. Despite a tough angle, Dallas, who was dynamic with the ball at his feet all night, managed an immediate and surprisingly hard-hit effort on goal that necessitated a save from Salazar.
The Drillers struggled to put the ball on target for the remainder of the night, though, and making matters worse, their own defense began to display some of the porousness that Ridgeview’s had early on.
That resulted in Bryant’s 67th-minute insurance goal off a ball that the BHS defenders failed to control, and it continued in the remaining 13 minutes of play, as the Drillers were lucky not to take a bigger loss. They needed a sliding save to deny Gil Maravilla on an incisive run. Then a seemingly innocuous long ball from the Wolf Pack defense dropped directly to striker Hugo Viramontes, who sped straight for the goal past defender Jacob Beltran, but had his softly hit shot roll just past the right post.
The final 2-0 margin resulted in the first loss for BHS since a Dec. 2 defeats at Clovis-Buchanan, snapping an 11-game unbeaten streak. The Drillers will travel to face Liberty Tuesday, while Ridgeview hosts Highland.
Reporter Henry Greenstein can be reached at 661-395-7374. Follow him on Twitter: @HenryGreenstein.
.