Photo of Dominguez by Matthew Sanger
A young Jackrabbits girls’ soccer team took their lumps in a home loss to Capistrano Valley, 3-0, in the second round of the CIF playoffs—but with just three graduating starters, the future was already looking bright just moments after a grey-skied loss.
The Cougars needed all of three minutes and ten seconds to put Poly in a hole, when Jordan Marada turned one from the right elbow, crossing it to the far post beyond the reach of Poly keeper Corrin Villasenor. The Rabbits played their best soccer of the day in the ensuing twenty minutes, pushing (perhaps too hard on the finishes) to get the equalizer.
Ebonie Buenrostro, who was excellent down the lines all game, put a free kick into the box, where freshman Celeste Dominguez got a clean look at it—but the ball hit the underside of the Cougars’ crossbar and bounced straight down. In the 20th minute, Megan Brock had a free kick in striking distance, but the ball sailed high. Then when Buenrostro took the ball off a corner, she got a clean strike on it…only to have it sail high.
“For 15 or 20 minutes, I thought we were very threatening,” said Collins. “Unfortunately, it took 1-0 to wake us up.”
A through ball was played perfectly by Candice Uhl in the 35th minute, who poked it past Villasenor, deflating the big Poly crowd, and the young Poly roster. The wind seemed to go out of the Rabbits after that, and when the rain started falling at halftime, things seemed to go further downhill. The second half was very sloppy, as Poly struggled to clear the ball, to connect passes, and to put themselves in scoring position. “We went into panic mode way too early in the second half,” said Collins.
Cynthia Dimnik scored in the final moments of the game to put the exclamation point on it.
On offense, Poly definitely struggled with the loss of Jazmine Rhodes, the senior going to Cincinatti. Sidelined by a pair of yellows in the first round, Rhodes admitted it was a frustrating experience spending her final game for Poly on the bench. “I’m not used to just watching like that,” she said. Rhodes has been the glue on the offensive end, and despite a solid performance from Dominguez, the Rabbits looked a little lost without her. “She has a swagger,” said Collins. “She finds a way to pull the young players with her—that’s what we missed.”
The bright side for Poly is that while Rhodes, Megan and Jessica Brock, and Keyana Thompson-Shaw are graduating, a whole host of talent returns, including both goalkeepers, Buenrostro, Dominguez, Alexis Leyba, and Elliott Gentile, among others. It will be another talented group to contend with—and if Collins gets her way, the hard defeat at home will help them. “We’re just going to soak it in, so we can not repeat it. You have to acknowledge what it is, and face it, to make sure it’s not repeated.”