By Malika Andrews |
The Pilots took down the St. Mary's Gaels in their first pre-season WCC match up of the year 5-1 as freshman Brandon Zambrano earned his first hat trick in the game. That performance, along with his two assists over the rest of the weekend earned him the honor of WCC Men's Soccer Player of the Week.
The men then beat Pacific 5-2 on Sunday in their first WCC home game.
While most of the first half was spent in Tiger territory, Pacific was able to convert and score, heading 1-0 into the second half. In the 54th minute, Tristan Blackmond scored his second goal of the game, putting Pacific up 2-0.
Minutes later, midfielder Eddie Sanchez shot a low ball past Pacific’s goalkeeper to score the Pilots’ first goal of the game. Less than a minute later, forward Erik Edwardson tied the game by bending the ball into the top corner of the net.
In the 65th minute, senior defender Derek Boggs scored his first goal of the season and gave the Pilots the lead off a corner kick from Hugo Rhoads.
“When you are a defender, you will take them [shots] when you can get them,” Boggs said. “It fell in my lap from Eddie popping it across. The guy went to clear it and it deflected off me, and I was fortunate enough to have it go in.”
Edwardson scored his second goal of the afternoon by heading the ball into the net and putting the Pilots up 4-2. As the game was coming to a close, Sanchez added another goal of his own to top off the Pilots’ win at 5-2.
This is the Pilots’ first back-to-back win of the season.
“It was a lot to handle in the beginning,” Boggs said. “We were testing out a new formation, we were able to deal with it. We had a couple setbacks, a couple goals, but we figured it out in the second half.”
Malika Andrews is a sports reporter for The Beacon. She can be reached at andrewsm17@up.edu or on Twitter @malika_andrews.
