In almost a repeat of the first round of the playoffs, the Hart High boys’ soccer team gave up a goal in the final minute in Wednesday’s CIF Southern Section Open Division semifinal first leg at Loyola High School.
The Hart Hawks got through almost 80 minutes on Wednesday against the Cubs as they looked to take a scoreless draw back to Hart High on Saturday for the second leg.
But the Cubs had other plans as junior Josh Gallagher slotted home the game’s lone goal to give Loyola a narrow advantage.
“I thought in the first half, we definitely played well,” Hart head coach Alex Bernal said in a phone interview on Thursday. “I was happy with how we were playing the second half a lot. Big thing has to do with the fatigue of the guys with such a quick turnaround. It was kind of just hard to maintain the intensity and work rate that we had in the first half.”
The Hawks were coming off playing 100 minutes, including two overtime periods, on Monday at Mira Costa High School. Hart eventually won that two-legged tie in a penalty shootout to advance to the semifinals against Loyola.
Now, the Hawks are looking to do the same thing as the last round: turn around a 1-0 deficit.
“We’ve been there before. We’ve done it,” Bernal said. “So, we can do it again. There’s no reason why we can’t.”
Bernal said the Hawks did well to limit the number of scoring chances for Loyola, with the most dangerous one coming off a throw-in in the first half. He added that Loyola’s set pieces weren’t as dangerous as the ones Mira Costa had, as the Mustangs were the clearly bigger team.
The biggest difference between the first round and the semifinal round for Hart is that the Hawks are hosting the second leg. They had to overturn a deficit on the road last time.
“Hopefully we can draw a big crowd and just help energize the boys,” Bernal said. “It’ll help just to have the community out here rooting for the boys.”
Hart and Loyola are set to meet on Saturday at Hart High at 5 p.m. for the right to play in the Open Division championship.
“We don’t want the journey to end, so we got an opportunity to keep it alive on Saturday,” Bernal said.
