NM State Aggies vs CBU Lancers Soccer 10-6-19

Aggie Kaitlyn May

What?  Read on.

Whoa there, JDH417!  Aren’t we skipping something here?  Yes.  I sort of missed the girls’ 10-4-19 game against GCU.  I say, “Sort of,” because I was there and did see some of the game later, but technically, I wasn’t there for the game.  Let me explain, hopefully in quick manner.

I took Friday off, in addition to Thursday, for volleyball.  Before Ron picked me up for the game, I got the impression there was a chance of rain, so I didn’t take my cushion and seat, neither of which would do well in the rain.  Just as he pulled up, it was sprinkling.  When we got to the soccer complex, there was no one in the stands and the gates were shut.  A helpful attendant came over when we drove by and said that they were in a lightning delay.  It’d be at least a half hour.

We waited for about an hour.  Various fans came and went or stayed.  Tom was there.  He sat down in his stadium chair in front of the ticket office waiting for the game.  After an hour and checking when sundown was going to happen, I concluded they weren’t going to get the game in, since there was still no one on the field.  I’d said before at work that I’d probably go ahead and come in if any of these soccer matches were rained out.  So, I told Ron I wanted my day off back more than I wanted to keep sitting around.  I felt bad for Ron, since this was his regular day off and he didn’t have anything else to do.

I surprised the people at work.  None of my supervisors were there to fix my timecard and my vacation day, but I’m sure this will get worked out eventually.  I checked the soccer team’s Twitter.  They were still determined to play.  They didn’t have much choice.  Though there were two cancellations earlier this season, they had to play this conference game and had another game scheduled on Sunday.  When I noticed the match had started, a co-worker suggested it might be on the Internet.  It was.  I thought the WAC Digital Network blacked out home games, but at least not this time. 

And, I’ve taken too long with this.  GCU scored twice.  Corey Kizer scored late in the second half to make it 2-1, which was the final.  But, with 7 minutes left, the game was stopped for darkness.  I was almost wrong; they nearly got it all in.  They should have played at the recreational park next door where they have stadium lighting, which they don’t have at the soccer field.  Dmitri Fong had 5 saves.  The Aggies actually had more shots on goal (6).  If they’d played it out, I could see the Aggies tying it, but I doubted they’d be able to win it.

I shouldn’t have gone to work either.  Though I seemed okay, I knew was actually sick from the bug I’d caught Thursday.  I hope I didn’t spread it around, since it was apparently highly contagious.  I did okay, but I was swigging cold medicine when I got home.  Saturday was unpleasant, but could have been worse.  Sunday morning, after more cold medicine, I was basically over it.  I sat around watching TV, waiting to leave for the match.

I have to give a little bonus coverage here of what I watched on TV.  Stadium showed a Women’s College Volleyball match between the Colorado State Rams and the Wyoming Cowgirls.  This was a replay, where they took out some of the dead time to fit the whole game into a two-hour timeslot.  I don’t know when it was actually played live.  They were in Wyoming’s small volleyball gym and it was packed.  I was eager to see CSU’s Kirstie Hillyer again (9-2-18).  To refresh, she’s 6’6”, well-built, a very good player, and gorgeous.             

I won’t recap the whole thing here.  (Why not?  I’ve blown two pages already not writing about today’s soccer match.)  CSU won 3-2 in five sets.  Set #3 was awesome.  The Rams were down by 6 early and went on a 9-0 to take the lead.  The Cowgirls came back and won it 29-27 in extra points.  CSU fought off at least four set points.  One of the announcers noted the Wyoming quarterback was there cheering on the team.  Kirstie had her knee wrapped and wasn’t jumping that well.  She still had double digit kills.  Breana Runnels was the high-scorer with 29!  I noticed CSU had a reserve player that looked about 5’ flat.  I would liked to have seen her next to Kirstie. 

Are we ready to talk about today’s game finally?  I had no misgivings about going.  I felt great.  It was warm and sunny with a little breeze outside.  After being in bed most of yesterday, I wanted to get out.  There was a light crowd again at the soccer field.  (They didn’t show the crowd on the video for Friday’s game, but from the sound, it might have been about the same number of people, even with a two-hour delay.)  The crowd probably doubled when the Gadsden High Lady Panthers soccer team came in.  

Danny was there.  He’d been out sick too and hadn’t made it out to volleyball Thursday or soccer Friday.  We talked a bit about the announcement of the WAC adding another school next year.  I’d heard about it during Aggie Football last night.  They’d shot themselves in the foot with three turnovers deep in the Liberty Flames’ red zone and with nearly 100 yards in penalties.  The final was 20-13 Liberty.  They really should have won this one.  (Liberty was even worse in penalties.)  Currently winless, if they can win two games this season, it’ll be an amazing comeback.  The two incoming schools have decent football programs, though not FBS-level.  This might help with the Aggies’ home scheduling.  Maybe the WAC picks up football as a conference sport?        

The Volleyball girls were there at the game at least.  Here they are with Striking the Wonder Dog.  The dog certainly has some choice company here and likewise for the girls.  (He’s one handsome pooch.)     

Out on field, the Cal Baptist Lancers looked really sharp in their warm-up tops.  They came out and played in an attractive Navy blue and gold.  The PA stumbled badly over one of the girls’ names.  I think it was Rola Badawiya, which is the only difficult name on their roster.  She tossed her head back and laughed.   She must get that a lot.  For the Aggies (speaking of interesting names), Xitlaly Hernandez was not in the lineup again.  She’s likely gone for the season.  Team captain, Kelly Burton, didn’t start again.  What’s up with that?

First Half

The crowd was amazingly quiet at the start of the match.  The girls on both teams and their coaches made up the difference with their shouting.  Danny and I were still chatting.  We were discussing arenas.  Our Pan-Am Center is apparently not nationally well-regarded.  “Are we supposed to build a new stadium every 20 years?” he asked.  It could be worse.  Danny mentioned a “Wall of Gum” at Seattle U.  People aren’t allowed to chew gum in their arena, so there’s a wall where people stick their gum before going in.  That’s truly gross.

42’ left in the half, the Aggies were on the attack to start.  They made a concentrated effort that ended in Shea O’Connor taking a header shot that was caught.  39’ Corey made a pass to Shea, who took another shot.  Lancer goalie, Romane Salvador  fell on the roller.  38’ CBU made their first attack.  The shot went high and hit the scoreboard.  It’s like there’s a target on it for opposing teams.  37’ the Lancers took another shot from the wing.  Dmitri started getting really vocal with her teammates.  She caught two more shots over the next couple of minutes. 

30’ I thought I saw a Lancer player pull down an Aggie player by her ponytail.  I must have mis-seen that, though the ref did issue a warning to the CBU player.  29’ Alexa Barerra took a shot that was caught.  28’ Dmitri had to come out to dive on a ball.  27’ the Aggies were called for a foul that gave CBU a free kick that was like a corner.  25’ CBU had an actual corner.  Dmitri caught it.  A little bitty kid was acting as the ballboy running around behind her net.  It was adorable.  Dmitri was yelling at him to get to the balls faster.  (Just kidding, though I could see her yelling at the crowd to cheer harder.)

23’ another CBU corner, and 21’ an Aggie foul.  The Aggie bench was in an uproar over that one.  Dmitri came out to get a loose ball and collided with an Aggie defender.  18’ back down field, Corey took a header shot that went wide.  17’ a CBU attack got a wide open look at Dmitri with no defenders.  The attack was broken up.  The ref waved off a possible handball by the Aggies in the box.  16’ another Aggie foul.  This time both teams were mad at the ref. 

At this point, I noticed the ballgirl on then near sideline.  It was a player who was off the roster, Kaitlyn May, who I may or may not have incorrectly identified at the autograph session.  (I’m using a program from last year to look her up.) Regardless, she’s very pretty and cool-looking.  (She has pretty turquoise-colored nails.)  She came to my attention as she tried to “help” a line judge with a call.  Nice try, and I was distracted for the rest of the match.           

 

7’ Hannah Leitner got tripped outside the CBU box.  The fans wanted a call and didn’t get it.  4’ Shea knocked down an attacker in the Aggie box.  No call.  Beautiful.  Can you see where this is heading though?  Right after that, Aggie Jordan Gregory and Lancer Ari Coronado got into it in front of the stands.  It started with some rough checking, and then they dropped any pretext of playing and went to slapping.  I think they both realized that continuing the fight would be a poor idea and allowed themselves to be separated. 

Ari threw the first punch, but the ref only saw Jordan’s retaliation.  Only Jordan got ejected.  The crowd was furious.  The Aggies were now down a player for the rest of the match.  Soccer rules suck, by the way.  Put in a penalty box and encourage fighting like hockey.  I’m not kidding.  This fight was easily the play of the match, perhaps even every match I’ve seen.   

2’ this ejection almost had immediate consequences as a CBU shot hit the Aggie goal crossbar and ricocheted straight down, somehow not going in.  The shorthanded Aggies went on the attack.  Eli Gonzalez had a running fight downfield as she took the ball onto the CBU side.  With under a minute left, Shea took a shot that just went high.  0-0 at the half.  The Aggies had 2 shots on goal with 1 corner.  The Lancers had 1 shot on goal with 4 corners.

Halftime

Some little soccer players ran out on to the field for a five-minute match with no goalies.  They were adorable.  The final was 1-1.  The PA hoped that they’d be playing out on this field when they were older, except they were all boys, so I don’t know how that would happen.  I noticed some of the Gadsden players went to the courtesy table and picked up the team picture cards.  Maybe they got them signed later.  Before the start of the second half, the Gadsden team went to the front of the stands.  The PA introduced them and they tossed shirts into the crowd.  Danny got up and waved and got one. 

Second Half

The Aggies were still down a player to start.  43’ the Aggies started off on offense anyway.  Katie Martinez took a shot that went wide.  42’ Corey took a header shot.  Eli made a follow up attack.  The Aggies wanted a foul as her attack was broken up hard.  A group of university firemen had come in during the first half.  They were into it.  They were shouting to the ref that these no-calls were going to start another fight.   

40’ a CBU corner.  37’ Coach Baarts furiously yelled out some instruction to Dmitri.  Right after that, she stopped a close shot.  Whatever it was, it was good advice.  I noticed ballgirl Kaitlyn was now exclusively staying on the side of the field I and, perhaps more relevantly, the firemen were on.  Hmm. . .  No complaints from me.  I was glad to see more of her. 

34’ CBU took a free kick that went just wide.  33’ a CBU girl went over Katie’s back for a header ball.  A foul was called after Katie and the crowd complained.  31’ Dmitri stopped a weak shot in front of the net.  Emma Smith went down on the play.  She came out and Kelly came in.  One of the firemen was yelling for her.  I wonder if that was Kelly’s boyfriend.

30’ from what I saw, a CBU shot near the Aggie net deflected off Rola Badawiya and went in.  1-0 CBU.  I think this happened just to give the PA more trouble pronouncing her name again.  I’d hoped this score would end the ejection, but it did not.  (I don’t know soccer rules.)  The Aggies were still a player down.  Right after, Katie complained to the ref about another collision.  29’ CBU did a mass substitution.  I wondered if it was for more defense. 

27’ there was a play over by the Aggie bench on the other side of the field.  The reserves went crazy cheering.  I couldn’t see what that was about.  22’ CBU corner.  21’ Kelly was knocked over.  19’ Dmitri fell on a roller at the net.  18’ CBU corner.  Maybe they subbed in more offensive players?  16’ Katie made a big kick out-of-bounds to clear the box.  The ball went into the stands and bounced back on field.  CBU got a free kick on another Aggie foul.  The crowd was angry again. 

13’ Shea charged at a Lancer defender with the ball on their side of the field.  She mishandled ball and Shea took it.  The Lancer then tripped Shea right outside the CBU box.  The ref corrected his previous mistake and ejected the Lancer player.  The Aggies got a free kick, but didn’t get a shot off on goal, though the number of players now was even.  One of the firemen asked Kaitlyn a couple of soccer questions about the play.  Come on, guys.  She was literally standing in front of you for of whole half, even when the ball was at the other end of the field.  I think she was hoping for a little more interaction than that. 

11’ Dmitri caught a shot.  The Aggies tried to push here.  10’ Shea passed to Alexa, who had a reasonably good shot that went wide.  8’ Hannah passed to Shea in front of the CBU net and that shot just missed.  6’ Jody Hernandez accidently kicked the ball into the ref’s back.  I do think it was unintentional.  The crowd cheering was not.  The ref shrugged.  I guess I had that coming.  4’ Shea and CBU keeper Romane  tangled chasing a ball out of the box.  Shea wanted a call.  She was fairly relentless in chasing any loose ball by the net. 

For the final minutes, the ball stayed in the far corner by the Aggie net.  CBU more-or-less kept the ball there until time expired.  1-0 Lancers was your final.  The PA announced the score with such dejection that someone might want to keep an eye on her for the rest of the day.  She’s been calling defeats here for the last two seasons.  I’m not sure why this one was any worse than the others.  The team came over to the stands and hesitantly waved.  The crowd stood and gave them a hearty round of applause for their effort.   

I forgot to get the final stats off the scoreboard.  From box score, the Lancers were up 8-1 in corners and 5-3 in shots on goal.  If there’s some lessons to take away from this one, I don’t know what they are.  The teams came into this match with mirror records: Aggies 1-8-2, Lancers 8-2-1.  The Aggies at least did a good job of keeping a better team honest.  If they could just finish on a few of their attacks or get more of them, they’d have some more wins, since their defense is pretty solid.

I confronted the firemen afterward on their indolence or apathy or ignorance dealing with Kaitlyn.  Actually, I did talk to one of them about building safety.  Really.  This came up at work.  As part of their active shooter escape plan, management was going to try to break one of the building’s outside windows to test that as an exit.  I had a shocked reaction to that plan.  I told Ron on Thursday and he gave a rather technical response that boiled down to, that’s a dumb idea.  The fireman rolled his eyes after I told him.  I can guess what he thinks.  He asked who I worked for to make sure he didn’t do any business with us.           

I was not depressed afterward.  The time in the sun with my health more-or-less back had rejuvenated me, regardless of the outcome on the field.  At least I got to see a girl fight.  Maybe there’ll be some hair-pulling next time.  I went out for that Honey Barbeque Chicken Strip Sandwich from Whataburger that I meant to get last weekend.  So, I was in a decent mood. 

However, before I left the parking lot, I was somewhat haunted by a forlorn pretty blonde teen girl sitting on the back of a truck in front of me.  She looked so depressed.  (I’m sure she wasn’t the PA.)  I, of course, had no idea if this anything to do with the game.  She put on a pair of sunglasses as I pulled out, like she was hiding her eyes.  Well, maybe the Aggies will win next time and cheer her up.