Today the Loyola Cubs took on Santa Ana High School in their first playoff bout of the year. Both teams came out with energy to begin the game. The teams seemed evenly matched for the first few minutes of play, but Loyola was on form and their attacks got progressively more and more menacing as the half went on. Finally in the 19th minute senior Jake Rogers finished a rebound from freshman Marco Bottene's shot. The referees were active in this game from the beginning, the beginning of the first half saw multiple fouls from both teams. In the 22nd minute junior keeper Zach Driscoll was called for a foul in the box and Santa Ana was awarded a penalty. However, Zach erased his earlier mistake by spectacularly saving the penalty shot. In the 31st minute, senior James Redington went on a full field run through the entire opposing team for a sweet goal. Not even a minute later, senior Spencer Roberts scored a nice shot coming off of an assist from senior Kenechi Ekeomodi. With five minutes left in the first half, Loyola was controlling the game with a 3-0 lead. Santa Ana’s energy level saw a considerable dip going into the second half. Two minutes into the half junior Alejandro Sanchez scored a goal after a pretty pass from Marco Bottene. With Loyola going up 4-0, the game seemed all but over for Santa Ana. In the 57th minute Santa Ana had an opportunity to score once again from a free kick right outside the box but Zach Driscoll had other plans as he deftly saved the shot. Shortly afterward on the counterattack senior captain Nate Smith-Hastie was sent on a run and almost chipped the keeper. The ball rebounded off the keeper’s gloves and Senior Malcolm Hawkins finished up the goal pushing the Loyola lead to 5-0. Towards the end of the game, junior Lucas Ibarra scored off a cross from Matt Weiss. Shortly after, with 6 minutes on the clock sophomore Warren Langton scored a beautiful shot making the score 7-0 in Loyola’s favor. In the final minute of the game senior Nico Lopez set up junior Beau Stellar for a goal pushing the final score to 8-0. With that, Loyola asserted their dominance at home with a crushing win against Santa Ana.

-Dominic Elrington ‘21