Boys Soccer opened the CIF playoffs with a 6-0 wildcard win today at Whittier Christian.  Our Spartans entered the playoffs as an at-large team as the SAL #5 entry and surprised Whittier Christian on their home turf as they were the #3 team from the Olympic league.  We got started early as Brandon Ayala scored off of Robert Ochoa's cross at the 9 minute mark.  We continued to pepper the Whittier goalie with shots but he kept coming up big.  We finally got goal #2 at 21 minutes when Jaime Cuevas converted a service from Manny Medina.  The first half ended 2-0 with Whittier hanging on.

The halftime talk was to score early in the second period, put the game out of reach, and play 40 minutes of good soccer.  The boys responded well scoring just 7 minutes into the second half as Dario Barragan found Brayan Vargas on a breakaway up the middle and Brayan finished it for the 3-0 lead.  We continued to put high pressure on their defense and then at 55 minutes, Eduardo Lopez drew a foul in the box as he weaved through several defenders and Dario Barragan buried the penalty kick.  Two minutes later Vargas slipped a through ball to Jorge Raygoza who increased our lead to 5-0.  The final Spartan goal came at the end as Ochoa got his second assist on Jorge Hurtado's goal at 75 minutes.

The defense led by Eric Fierros and Ryan Rittenhouse was solid all afternoon not allowing any clean shots on frame in recording the clean sheet.

Our Spartans next take on Silverado HS in Victorville on Thursday, February 16 at 3:00pm.  Silverado is the CIF #2 seed as the Desert Sky champs and defeated us early in the year 2-0 in the Oak Hills tournament.  It is tough to beat a good team twice... let 'em have it Spartans!