Courtesy: Contra Costa Times


Local boys soccer team claims national title

By Matt Smith

30/7/2009

The Mavericks Aztecas, an under-16 boys soccer team based in Richmond, won the U.S. Futsal 2009 National Championship in its division in early July.

The Aztecas include boys from Richmond, Albany, El Cerrito, Kennedy, Salesian, and St. Patrick-St Vincent High Schools.

This tournament was five-a-side indoor soccer and took place in Baltimore. The Mavericks Aztecas wrapped up the championship with a 4-3 victory over New Jersey in the championship match on July 12.

Preliminary games included a 4-0 win over District of Columbia, a 4-1 win over Manchester Massachusetts, a 5-0 win over Boston and a 4-3 loss to New Jersey. The loss to New Jersey was the Aztecas' first loss in their age group in two years, and they avenged it by beating the same New Jersey team in the finals by the same score.

"In the prelims, we were too aggressively looking for additional goals and New Jersey was able to come back," Richmond coach Karl Malamud-Roam said. "They eventually beat us in the last second on a disputed penalty kick. In the finals, we got ahead 3-1, they attacked hard and got to 3-2, but we were able to score an insurance goal."

The Aztecas also won the North-West Regional Tournament in Seattle in March with a 10-1 win in the finals. Among the Azteca players are David Rojas and Pablo Perez of El Cerrito; Daniel Malamud-Roam of Albany; Israel Ayala, Antonio Rocha, David Suarez and Leonardo Montes of Richmond; Francisco Lopez from Kennedy,

Antonio Munguia from Salesian and Omar Sanchez of St. Patrick-St Vincent.

The Futsal Tournament MVP was goalkeeper Sanchez, who only allowed 1.6 goals a game and also scored twice during the finals. Five-on-five indoor soccer tends to have a lot more goals scored, so not only did Sanchez shut the opponent down, but he got in on the offensive action himself.







Posted by Luca Ranocchiari --> luca.ranocchiari@futsalplanet.com