SANTA BARBARA, CA – The Santa Barbara City College Men's Soccer team won their last home game of the regular season Tuesday night in an absolute thriller over LA Mission. The conference win improves the Vaqueros to 5-4 in conference play with one match remaining.
After going down in the 15th minute due to a penalty kick goal, the Vaqueros were hungry for an equalizing goal for nearly the remainder of the match.
With 4 shots on goal in the first half but nothing to show for it, the Vaqueros remained down 1-0 into halftime. 5 more shots on goal in the second half (and 15 shots overall) and SBCC nearly still could not find a way to break through.
To make matters worse, Angel Diaz was sent off in the 88th minute, and the Vaqueros were reduced to 10 men.
No worries though, as the equalizer finally came 3 minutes into extra time as Lennart Perczynski assisted Gino Contreras. Just 90 seconds later, Charles Jay Retzer netted a ball from Brandon Garcia de la Fuente and the 10-man Vaqueros flipped the match entirely on its head, coming out victorious 2-1.
"Very proud of the team," head coach Alexander Zermeno said. "It was the never stop believing mentality, going down 10 [men] never seems to phase us."
The late late show from SBCC gives them a chance to finish second in the conference with a win at Oxnard on Friday to round out the regular season.
At the time of publishing, the result of SBCC-Oxnard was a 2-2 draw, meaning the Vaqueros (5-4-1) finish third in the conference behind Oxnard (4-2-4) and Santa Monica (8-0-1).
