ORANGE — The Estancia girls soccer team used two second-half goals from sophomore Vanessa Pastrana to beat Campbell Hall 2-0 on Saturday in the CIF-SS Division 5 final at El Modena High..
The top-seeded Eagles (21-3-1) earned the first CIF-SS championship in program history.
Estancia coach Josh Juarez, who has been at the team’s helm since 2015, was overcome with joy after the monumental victory.
“It feels like an exclamation mark at the end of an amazing season,” he said. “The girls have been hard working and resilient. We won against some very tough competition and capped it off against a team like Campbell Hall, they were the toughest of the bunch.”
The game was a stalemate for nearly 60 minutes when a Campbell Hall defender was given a straight red card for making an obscene gesture to the Estancia crowd.
That gave Estancia the advantage as they would play 11 versus 10 the rest of the game.
“After the red card, I feel like we started to pick it up after they went one player down and we started to wake up and move the ball better,” Pastrana said.
After several varying attacks by Estancia’s Paloma Vallejo, Jana Akins and Pastrana, the breakthrough came in the 61st minute.
Vallejo set up Pastrana with a nice ball, and she calmly hit a right-footed shot past Vikings goalie Lotus Landau-Levy to make it 1-0.
Ten minutes later, Pastrana doubled her tally as she got the ball on the right wing, cut back and used her left foot to beat Landau-Levy for her 20th goal of the season.
Estancia’s Vanessa Pastrana scored two goals in a victory over Campbell Hall 2-0 in the CIF-SS Division 5 final Saturday, Feb. 24, at El Modena High. (Photo by David Delgado)
“She can shoot with both (feet). She does that a lot,” Juarez said. “She can shoot with both feet, she’s a special player and she’s only a sophomore, and so we get to have her for a bit longer.”
Juarez marveled at Pastrana’s ability to consistently find the back of the net.
“We have a big time forward in Vanessa who’s been big time all year,” Juarez said. “It’s just fitting for her to just put those two goals away for us.”
Campbell Hall (13-3-2) had more scoring chances in the first half with powerful shots on target by Tea Maltzman, Whitney Jones and Clara Pettersson, but were constantly denied by Estancia goalkeeper Abby McIntyre.
“I thought our goalkeeper really stepped up in that first half, kept us in the game and gave us a chance,” Juarez said. “We’ve been talking about it all year, even if we’re struggling, can we get to halftime without giving up the goal.”
Juarez said championship game jitters likely played a role in his team’s first-half struggles with possession but was pleased with the second-half adjustments.
“A lot of nerves and rightfully so,” Juarez said. “We had a great crowd here, the girls were excited and the nerves were getting to us a bit. We weren’t settling the ball, everything was kind of, kicking it up in the air, nobody wanted to make a mistake, is the way I felt about it. In the second half I thought we played a little bit more free.”
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