ONTARIO — When the Ontario Christian boys soccer team played in the CIF Southern Section championship game Feb. 27, it was a bad-news, good-news situation.
The bad news was that the Knights surrendered a second-half lead and lost. The good news was that they were in a CIF championship game after losing in the first round of the playoffs each of the previous five seasons.
Thursday, the good news was that the Knights had already won a state playoff game. The bad news was that another second-half lead was surrendered.
And this bad news was more excruciating.
Taft scored the tying goal in the final seconds of second-half stoppage time then scored the winning goal about a minute into overtime to stun Ontario Christian 2-1 in a CIF State Division V Southern California regional semifinal.
Fifth-seeded Taft (19-6-6), the Central Section Division VI champion, advances to play at No. 3 Garfield for the regional title on Saturday. No. 1-seeded Ontario Christian’s season ends at 23-6-1.
“I really want them to take away, appreciating what they’ve done,” Knights coach Anthony Quintanilla said of his team. “There’s an argument that this is one of the greatest teams Ontario Christian has had. I want them to know that and remember how hard it was to get here and know what they have to do now to get over the hump.”
Only one of Ontario Christian’s starters graduates.
After a scoreless first half, the Knights pushed hard to take the lead and sophomore Jacob Rivera took a free kick from about 30 yards out that the Wildcats goalie made a diving stop to keep the game scoreless.
In the 58th minute, the Knights broke through when sophomore Benjamin Luistro scored off an assist from sophomore Dominik Martinez.
Ontario Christian seemed to be holding onto the lead, even as the Wildcats pushed numbers forward.
But the Knights couldn’t quite hold on.
Late in the fifth minute of stoppage time, Taft junior Lalo Lopez-Gonzalez got the ball near the right post and snuck it past goalkeeper Andrew Belden.
“I think it was just a mental lapse,” said Knights co-captain Jake De Corte, the lone senior starter. “We got ahead of ourselves, thinking about the next game when the game wasn’t there yet. I can’t even be mad at that. The last four years (until this year), there hadn’t been a time when we won a CIF game.”
Just a few seconds after kickoff following the tying goal, the referee whistled the end of regulation.
Quintanilla felt his team had done a good job of resetting for overtime.
“Certainly, we were a little down, but I think we did a good job of rallying them up and getting them ready. Taft’s a good team, so shout out to them,” he said.
It didn’t take long for the game to end. This time, Lopez-Gonzalez found himself on the end of a long ball and he headed it past Belden for the game-winner.
“The goal this season was obviously to win league, which we didn’t get to do,” De Corte said. “The second most important thing to me was to finally get a CIF win under my belt. And we did it four times. I call it a very successful season.”
