With as high as the level of play is in the Moore League, it can be easy to forget exactly how good the team’s elite are—with a dominating 5-0 win over Fountain Valley on Friday, the Millikan Rams did their best to remind everyone.  The second seed in the tournament, Millikan managed to pull a difficult double-feat, beating their opponents in both physicality and speed.  To our knowledge, there aren’t many sports where you don’t win if you manage both those things.  The Rams were so physical, they even had an assistant coach get his nose bloodied, when a ball spiked out of bounds at a high velocity.

Early and throughout, Millikan got the lion’s share (or should it be rams’ share) of the scoring opportunities, muscling through Fountain Valley at times, running around them at others.  It started eight minutes in, when Jose Torres sent a nice pass forward to Manuel Espinoza, who had such a clear path to the goal that the Fountain defender just grabbed his jersey and pulled him to the ground—if Espinoza had been two steps further, it would have been a penalty kick, but instead it was a free kick just outside the box.  He missed low on the attempt, hitting the wall, but the tone was set.

Just three minutes later, Jonathan Garcia hit one as hard as he could, took the richochet off his leg, and then drilled the second attempt in from just outside the box.  Four minutes after that, Manuel Estrada, the stellar defender for the Rams, cleared a ball almost to midfield from close to his own goal.  Edgar Melendrez took the ball, ran all the way down field, then sent a through pass for Jose “Chicken” Torres, who easily put it by the goalie.  Espinoza added two goals in the final ten minutes of the half (the first assisted by Ruben Sandoval and Garcia) to make it 4-0 at intermission.  Then in the second, Melendrez assisted Cesar Ramirez, who added the game’s final goal.  Millikan’s coach, Rod Petkovic, pulled his starters with about fifteen minutes left, to loud cheers from the sizable home crowd.

The shutout was Millikan’s 17^th of the season, a school record (and at Millikan, that’s saying something, of course).  The school has posted 16 shutouts several times, but never more until now.  Credit goes to Millikan’s forwards for pressing so well, their midfielders for aiding in a number of wicked counters, and their stout back line, led by Estrada (who sent the ball nearly to midfield every time he touched it).  Usually the goalkeeper, Jorge Becerra, gets a lot of credit for a shutout, but as Petkovic pointed out after the game, “They didn’t get any shots off, which was exciting.”  He also credited his team’s total defensive effort.  “I thought we did a very good job taking away their passing lanes—their forward [Jordan Gorman] has scored nine goals in the last nine games, and we limited him very well.”

As a coach, it will be Petkovic’s job to keep his experienced roster from getting too complacent as they progress through a very tough tournament.  “That’s what I told them after—don’t get too excited, you’re not going to get any more five goal games.  It’s going to get much harder now.”  The Rams’ next game will be on Wednesday afternoon, when they travel to face St. John Bosco, who managed an upset of Harvard-Westlake on Friday.