Share: mail

PCC men’s soccer finished the season with a 2-1 victory over visiting South Coast Conference opponent El Camino College Friday at Robinson Stadium.Benjamin Martin sealed the victory with a penalty kick after Gurgen Adzemian was brought down in the box early in the second half.

El Camino equalized minutes earlier when Chad Thille’s lofted free kick found its way to the boot of defender Michael Rice alone inside the box.

Rice hammered in left-footed passed the arms of Lancer Keeper Harmik Der Gevorgian.

“[El Camino College] played very strong,” said Soccer Director Cherif Zein. “They gave us a hard time. Although we were playing with 10 almost the whole second half.”

PCC midfielder Daniel Simonian was sent off with a red card shortly after Martin’s goal, which forced the Lancers to play a man down for the remainder of the game.

Simonian was expelled from the field because of excessive arguing with the referee.

With that in mind, head coach John Britton put the Warriors into pressing mode. “We had little choice,” he said.

El Camino took a page out of the Lancer play book and relied heavily on long throws from Thille, which caused chaos in front of Der Gevorgian.

Der Gevorgian was replaced in the final 15 minutes by Mario Umanzor, but weren’t able to push the tying goal across.

Both Umanzor and Der Gevorgian gathered two saves each.

The Lancer back line played inspired after the loss of Simonian, and were led by captain Sergio Rodriguez who was nearly flawless through the day.

Adzemian had a try stopped early in the first half, but his rebound was cleaned up by Ricky Reyes, a reliable attacker who scored his fifth goal of the season.

“We had a good chemistry throughout the game,” said Adzemian. “But it sucks that we didn’t make the playoffs.”

The Lancers outplayed the Warriors in shots, 11-4. “We missed a lot of chances to increase the score,” said PCC midfielder Greg Altounian. “We had some momentum in parts of the first and the second half.”

“It was a good season overall,” added Altounian, who played his last game as a Lancer.

PCC finished the season 8-8-4 and 5-6-3 in conference play but failed to make postseason play when their forfeit victory over El Camino Compton Community Education Center was overturned by Rich Kollen, SCC Commissioner.

“I thought we had a good chance to qualify for the playoffs when [Compton] dropped out. But then, in this league, everybody runs whatever they want to,” said Zein. “We ended up getting screwed.

Follow: rssyoutubeinstagrammail

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.