Mira Costa begins by blanking West
TORRANCE » Dylan Kodama remembers how last season ended for the Mira Costa boys soccer team.
“I think for everyone that was on the team last year, losing in the semis for both (the CIF SoCal) regionals and CIF (Southern Section), gives us a lot of drive for this year to not make the same mistakes,” Kodama, a senior midfielder, said.
Tuesday, the Mustangs took the first step on the long road back with a 3-0 season-opening win over West Torrance.
Kodama opened the scoring in the first half for the Mustangs.
“I thought we played pretty well, but there are still a lot of things that we need to do better,” he said. “I think it was a good performance for our first game, but still a lot of stuff to work on. I think defensively, we need to clean up our mistakes and just keeping the ball in general, I think we can do a much better job.”
The Mustangs opened the season severely shorthanded with up to 11 players out due to club commitments, transfer sit-out period or injuries.
It does allow coach Al Brown a chance to work on 11 vs. 11 situations in practice as the players start to make their return.
“The idea we have, as we tier people in, we have a big team this year, bigger than I normally would have carried, but part of it was we don't have them available for half a season,” Brown said. “So its making sure they are the team we play against. Both teams go against each other in practice. The 11 who can't go, I'm looking at them to play the same way I'm asking the other 11 to play. It's about mirroring each other.”
The drop-off wasn't noticeable as the Mustangs added a pair of goals in the second half. Nico DeSisto put them up 2-0 and Thomas Temperly added the third goal. Goalkeeper Evan Hansen made six saves to record the shutout.
“Overall, I think we're further along in our first game than we are usually,” Brown said. “The last couple of seasons, with Covid, we haven't had that much time to get ourselves ready, so it was good to be able to see what we've done in practice actually out on the field for the first time.
“I'm pretty proud of the intensity that each of the players had. That's the hardest thing to coach and from there, we have to start shaping things.”
Putting it all together will go a long way into determining if this year's team has a better ending than last season.
“This team has the higher ceiling (compared to last year) in terms of individual skill,” Brown said. “But sometimes with that individual skill, it can be difficult to make sure you're melding it as a team.
“Last year, everyone was locked in as a team, kind of a continuation from the year before. We have a lot of new faces this year, we have a lot of individual skill, so it's making sure that they figure out how to play as a team and once we get that ... individual talent plus team effort, you're unstoppable.”