Skyline’s Men’s Soccer team had a heartfelt 3-0 road loss against City College of San Francisco back on October 18th.

City College had the advantage with the smaller field compared the field Skyline is used to playing on. Skyline was scored on the first half at 19:30 by Armando Sandria and in the second half was scored by Stone Garland at 67:00 and Sagan Patarroyo-White 85:00. According to the coaching staff, the team had to focus less on dribbling the ball and more on serving the shot.

The big takeaway from this loss for Skyline is where they go from here to make it playoffs which are right around the corner.

“From here and out we got to improve more. I think there is just three good teams, which is us City College and Canada,” said Diego Vasquez, right defender for Skyline. Throughout the game there was a lot of trash talking between players of both teams, Vasquez asked if the trash talking and mind games were a factor to the loss.

“Maybe for me not as much,” said Vasquez. “As for many of the guys I was talking to them before the game said they were nervous but I think a big factor was the field just because it is half of the field of Skyline and it impacted the way we played”

The small field advantage was a huge factor. Throughout the game five players from City College received yellow cards and a lot of players from Skyline argued with the referees on the calls on the game. Goalkeeper Julio Martin was very vocal on the field in trash talking, motivating his team and arguing with the referees.

“I just got overwhelmed with the game,” said Martin “I didn’t think the game was being played fairly”

When asked where the team goes from here Martin mention the motivational speech given at the end of the game.

“All I can say is that in practice we haven’t been fully committed, one hundred percent a lot of us have been missing practice not taking it all serious.” Martin says. “I feel that to be a successful team we should all take it serious in practices because I feel like we play how we practice and if practice is not strong then our game is not going to be strong.”

Head coach Gabe Saucedo believes when these two teams meet they have very intense game ever they play. Saucedo would know as he coached eleven seasons with the City College program. Yet even with a 3-0 loss Skyline needs some motivation with the playoffs coming up.

“We just got to keep improving,” said Saucedo. “We don’t put our heads down when we lose. We just got to keep moving forward.”

Skyline currently sit in fifth place in their division and will look to gain some positive momentum as their next two game will be at home against Foothill and West Valley.