The men’s soccer team played a close and physical game at home on Tuesday, ending in a 2-2 draw against the Cañada Community College Colts.
The Hawks are 2-1-2 on the season after their tie against the Colts and head coach Ron Preble said the team is solidifying their playing style and focusing on adaptations to the roster.
“We knew that they were going to be aggressive and they were going to be organized and they had been scoring goals,” Preble said. “So, we knew they had the ability to put one in the back of the net.”
Preble said the game was a “tale of two halves” with the Hawks taking a slower start, letting the game get away from them early on, but the second half fell more in the Hawks’ favor, allowing them to tie things up and prevent a loss. He said the team is on their way to where they want to be and are consistently improving.
Freshman right-wing Camden Locke scored Cosumnes River College’s first goal of the game, shortening their deficit after being down 0-2 for most of the first half. He said he thought the Hawks were the better team by the end of the game and knew the Colts were a formidable opponent after being knocked out of the 2023 3C2A Men’s Soccer Championship in the first round, 2-1.
“I just feel like as a team, there’s moments where sometimes we might get frustrated with each other in certain places,” Locke said. “But we all have to remember that we’re a family at the end of the day and we kind of just gotta bring it together, especially when we go down.”
Preble said the team had enough looks and two goals is typically what it takes to get a result in the game of soccer. He said he will continue to rotate guys off of the bench, exploring the weapons available to him in his playbook and on the roster.
Freshman striker Brian Ramirez scored the Hawks’ second goal and said they had to make a comeback, but couldn’t get it done.
“It is what it is. We move on to the next one,” Ramirez said. “We don’t worry about our results now. We just focus on the next game and we play Merced, and we know that they’re a good team and we know what we gotta do to them.”
The Hawks play the Merced Community College Blue Devils on Friday at home. The Blue Devils have a 3-1-1 record on the season going into Friday’s game and have yet to play one of the Los Rios colleges this season.