Los Alamitos girls soccer knocks off Newport Harbor for big boost to Sunset League title hopes ...Middle East

NEWPORT HARBOR — Vivi Zacarias of Los Alamitos scored from a wide angle in the first half and then scored on a perfectly placed free kick late in the second half to give the Griffins a 2-0 victory over Newport Harbor in a key Sunset League girls soccer match Tuesday at Newport Harbor High School.

The Griffins (12-5-3, 6-0), who are ranked No. 4 in Orange County, and No.3 Sailors (13-3-3, 5-1) finish the regular season in first and second place, respectively. However, the actual league champion and CIF-SS playoff seedings will not be determined until the Sunset League’s first ever league tournament is played.

Los Alamitos earned a bye in the first round, which will be played Thursday.

The second round is Monday and the final round is Wednesday.

The team with the most combined points from the regular season and the postseason tournament will be the league champion.

Los Alamitos has 18 points and will automatically pick up two points from the first-round bye.

Teams get two points for winning the first round, three points for winning the second-round game and four for winning the final game.

“Oh, it is huge,” Los Alamitos coach Pat Rossi said of the first-round bye. “We can rest legs. We didn’t sub too much today. I can go scout games, too.”

The Sailors, who play host to Fountain Valley in the first round on Thursday, enter the tournament with 15 points and still have a chance to win out as league champions depending on how the tournament unfolds.

The first goal came in the 28th minute, when Zacarias took a long pass along the left sideline, raced past the defender and scored into the right side of the goal.

“Initially I saw (teammate Jaylen Guidry) but she was a little bit deeper inside, so I knew if I crossed her, she wasn’t going to get there on time so I decided to take it on myself,” Zacarias said.

The second goal came in the 75th minute on a free kick from about 25 yards from the center of the goal.

Zacarias kicked the ball over a wall of defenders and into the upper left corner of the goal, placing it out of reach of the goalkeeper.

“I practice free kicks a lot on my own,” the senior captain said. “I practice a lot so I take pride in my free kicks. I try to focus on three things: know where I’m going to shoot it, stay composed and keep my eye on the ball. Once I blocked all the noise out of my head, I just kept my eye on the ball, knew where I was going to shoot it and it went in.”

The highly anticipated match featured two evenly matched teams.

Both teams came into the match undefeated in league play.

Newport Harbor had outscored league opponents 13-0 and the Griffins came in having outscored their opponents 13-1.

Newport Harbor pressured the Griffins defense for nearly the entire second half but couldn’t put away their chances, Sailors coach Justin Schroeder said.

“That game could have gone very different if we put away that early chance and if we put away the chances early in the second half,” Schroeder said. “And then we blink, give them a foul, give them their only shot of their second half, and they score on it.”

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