St. Pius cruises to stunning 11-2 rout of Hope Christian
Garcia gets 4 goals for 5A’s No. 3 team
Nobody could summon a reasonable explanation for this one.
Wednesday afternoon’s nondistrict boys soccer game between Hope Christian and St. Pius featured two teams that could end up hoisting blue trophies on Nov. 4.
But only one of the two played to that form Wednesday.
The Sartans hit the Huskies for three goals in the first six minutes, and by the time it was over, St. Pius had posted one of the strangest looking results of the entire 2017 season, beating visiting Hope Christian by a remarkably one-sided 11-2 score.
This is the same Hope team that came into St. Pius sporting a 17-1 record. It was a disastrous day for the Huskies — Class 4A’s top-ranked team — and a near-perfect one for St. Pius.
“The perfect storm,” Hope coach Steve Kokulis said.
“We knew we’d come out blazing,” said Sartans senior midfielder Alex Nana.
Senior forward Julian Garcia had four goals for Class 5A’s third-ranked St. Pius (13-3-3), and Isaiah Garcia (no relation to Julian) added a pair of goals. It was quite a precursor to Saturday’s enormously anticipated game with No. 1 Albuquerque Academy, at 11 a.m. on the West Side.
“We plan on giving them the best game we’ve played this season,” Nana said.
That is the first time the private school powers will be on the same field since the Chargers beat St. Pius in last November’s Class 5A state final.
“Nobody knows how good we are,” said Sartans coach A.J. Herrera, a 1999 St. Pius graduate and one of the school’s most elite soccer alums. “I mean, we haven’t gotten the job done yet, because our goal is to win state. Our entire team is hungry to get the job done.”
St. Pius’ record is decidedly misleading. The Sartans are 13-0-3 against New Mexico competition. Their three losses occurred in late August/early September on a Labor Day weekend trip to Washington, D.C.
St. Pius was a 7 seed when it reached the state championship game almost a year ago. That team had only one senior. The Sartans are still relatively young, with only four seniors, but appreciatively more experienced.
St. Pius hasn’t lost a game for nearly seven weeks, and this was the team’s highestscoring game of the season.
“We’re just really confident, and we came in with a lot of momentum,” Julian Garcia said. “We know how good we really are.”
St. Pius pulled all its starters midway through the second half Wednesday, but the scoring didn’t end there.
The Sartans are sure to get a first-round bye for the playoffs, which begin next weekend, and then they set out to unseat Academy.
“We want it bad,” Julian Garcia said. “This is definitely our year.”
NOTE: St. Pius earlier this week picked up an extra win, and lost one of its ties, when Volcano Vista forfeited two games for using an ineligible player. That player, Hawks forward Skylor Rose, subsequently became fully eligible for Volcano Vista.