Sandoval leads, Rams even district record

One half of Rio Rancho’s dynamic scoring tandem was absent Saturday.

The other half was not. Senior forward Payton Sandoval authored a two-goal, two-assist performance against Volcano Vista, and the visiting Rams, with an early flurry of goals, beat the Hawks 5-2 in a District 1-5A matchup.

“They were just opportunistic when they got the ball forward,” Volcano Vista coach Billy Thiebaut said. “They took care of business.”

And even in this early league encounter, for the Rams (9-3-1, 1-1) there was perhaps more urgency than for the Hawks (8-3), for whom this was a district opener.

Coming off a 3-2 loss to Cleveland earlier in the week, Rio Rancho coach John Shepard did not have junior David Hite for Saturday’s match. He and Sandoval have been, by a large margin, the Rams’ top two scorers this season.

“We have been working on ways to get more offense,” Shepard said. “And they put it into play today and saw the fruits of that.”

Sandoval assisted on the first two goals of the game, with Nick Acosta (ninth minute) and Lamar Bynum (24th) finishing. Sandoval himself picked up a crucial goal in the 34th minute, a shot that seemed to barely crawl over the goal line.

“We needed to get this result today,” said Sandoval, who also scored late in regulation. “We wanted to respond quickly.”

The Hawks pressed the action after halftime, and in fact got within 3-2 after a penalty-kick goal from Isai Rivas and a close finish by Gabe Chavez, the latter in the 64th minute.

But a pretty goal by senior Javier Reyna in the 74th minute was the insurance the Rams needed.

“This district is an absolute dogfight,” Shepard said. Four of the top nine ranked in the state by MaxPreps.com are in this district. “Any team can beat any other team on any given day. We finally put together a good, complete game, and we were mentally tough today.”