MICHELLE LUIS (10) of Garden Grove High keeps the ball away Campbell Hall player in Saturday’s CIF-SS Division 5 girls soccer semifinal game (Orange County Tribune photo by Jim Tortolano).
By Jim Tortolano/Orange County Tribune
The teams from Garden Grove High and Campbell Hall of North Hollywood played an evenly-matched girls soccer game in the CIF-SS Division 5 semifinals on Saturday.
It was so close that it took 85 minutes and 33 seconds to decide the winner. The visiting Vikings (13-2-2) prevailed 2-1 in overtime at Monsoor Stadium and will meet Estancia in the championship game on Friday, Feb. 23.
SOCCER NOT a contact sport? Annelise Baltazar (4) battles Campbell Hall player for possession of the ball.
Despite the close loss, Argo coach Rebekah Norton was (mostly) all smiles after the game.
“This team is the best,” she said. “Just the character, the heart. We have a really young team and we came together. I mean, the semifinals are just a testament to how they played.”
But it wasn’t entirely a surprise. “Honestly, we opened up against El Modena and we’d always lost against them [but] we just dominated them, 4-1. So I could see this was a special team. It was great to see them get this far.”
Indeed. The Argos have seven players on the varsity roster who are freshmen or sophomores.
The Vikings scored at the 6:11 mark of the first half, but the Argonauts tied it 7:24 of the second half on a goal by Yasmin Alfadhiel. Neither team found the goal for the rest of regulation time, and the Vikings finally broke through at 5:27 to get the win.
Grove finished 14-4-6 on the season and took third place in the tough Empire League. To make it to the semifinals, the Argonauts had to defeat Nuview Bridge 5-0, Tahquitz 3-2 and San Marino 2-2 on penalty kicks.
Marina advances to finals
Marina High School’s boys basketball team advanced to the CIF-SS Division 2A finals with a 63-58 win over San Gabriel Academy on Saturday.
Barack Simon scored 23 points to lead the Vikings, who will play Long Beach Poly in the championship finals Friday or Saturday.