Two quick goals midway through the second half Tuesday gave Manteca the lead for good over Ripon Christian in a 3-1 win for the visiting Buffaloes, their first under new coach James Burns.
“This first win feels good,” Burns said. “This group has been working hard since the spring and this has been a longtime coming. We have had some tough setbacks. We really didn’t finish matches over the weekend at the Hughson tournament, so for them to come out and put together the second half that they did was good to see and I am happy for those guys.”
“The hardest thing to do in this game is to put it in the back of the net,” Burns said. “We are finding that out.
“That was the story through the weekend at the Hughson tournament. We outplayed every team that we met, including the tournament champion. We outshot them, we out-possessed them, we just didn’t get the goals that we needed. We got them tonight, though.”
With the score tied at 1-1 in the 59th minute, Manteca’s Fernando Lopez fed Kai Masudi directly in front of the net for Masudi to notch his first goal of the game and put Manteca ahead, 2-1. In the closing minutes, Masudi buried a penalty kick for the final score of 3-1.
“On that first goal I was thinking that I had to score it,” Masudi said. “Because if I did, that would give us the lead.”
Yhair Martinez got the Buffaloes on the board in the 59th minute when he headed the ball into the net off of an assist from Jovanni Rubio.
“I saw the open opportunity, I took it and it went in,” Martinez said. “And I’m very happy about that.”
In the 22nd minute Jack Dooley gave the Knights (1-1) a 1-0 lead off of an assist from Drew Meester. That was one of just six shots Ripon Christian would take.
“We got tired in the end,” Knights coach Arlan Vander Woude said. “We played yesterday up in Angels Camp and we don’t have any football kids yet so our starters got tired.
“They are a good team and they beat us, but I just wish we would not have been as tired as we were.”
Ripon Christian goalie David Koolhaas made six saves, and his Manteca counterpart Alberto Gutierrez tallied three saves.
The Buffaloes host Venture Academy next Monday at 5 p.m., while the Knights travel to Calaveras Wednesday, Nov. 29. Ripon Christian’s game starts at 6:30.
