Hanna picks up big road win at Juarez-Lincoln
LA JOYA — After placing second in the Corpus Christi tournament this past weekend, Brownsville Hanna Golden Eagles coach Juan de Dios Garcia described the bus ride back home as somber.
Garcia knew his team was better than San Antonio Alamo Heights, and he wanted his players to prove that in their first game back after that 2-1 loss in the championship game.
It only took half an hour for the No. 6 Golden Eagles to wash that bad taste out of their mouths after routing the La Joya Juarez-Lincoln Huskies 3-0 in a non-district affair on Tuesday night.
Garcia said that, at least for the time being, the win against the seventh-ranked Huskies helps them put that loss in the rearview mirror as they focus now on District 32-5A which begins play on Feb. 3.
“Practically the kids know how it feels to be second place,” said Garcia of his team, which also finished second in the regional championship last year against Brownsville Porter. “It’s a sour taste and we don’t want to be No. 2. We want to be No. 1. That’s the team objective, for us to try and get to the top in any tournament and in a hurt.
“(In the second half here) we shuffled in some players to give them a chance to see what they could do, but this is just a tune-up for district. That is the main goal, we have a tough bunch of teams there.”
Hanna junior striker Carlos Acevedo scored the first goal Tuesday and assisted on the second goal.
Acevedo, too, described the trip from Corpus as gloomy, but something to look back and correct as the Golden Eagles head into district.
“Second place is hard to swallow,” Sandoval said. “As coach has taught us, we are the first loser. It’s very bitter, all the way (back home) he was telling us the mistakes and to just reflect on it. I think (against Juarez-Lincoln) we definitely played the way we wanted to.”
In the first five minutes, the Huskies stormed the Golden Eagles’ net. It appeared that Hanna hadn’t recovered from the weekend’s loss.
Instead, Garcia believed his team was not utilizing the field’s length.
Then Acevedo received a long pass and took the goalkeeper out of position. He eluded another Huskies defender in the box and gave a short pass to Luis Sandoval, who sent a missile into the La Joya net in the 10th minute.
Four minutes later, Acevedo repeated the feat, but this time shot into an open net for the second goal. Defender Luis Rocha added the final goal off a strong header coming from a corner kick.
“I think we were making some mistakes not passing the ball quick enough,” Garcia said. “We were getting ourselves in a hole. Once we started moving the ball around we got it going.”
