The Greenwave's Angel Cornejo (12) and Mario Uglade (10) go after the ball in Fallon's last home match.
The Greenwave varsity soccer team ended its season on Wednesday, but not before getting a notch under their belt.
In their second to last game of the season, the Wave grabbed their first win against the Fernley Vaqueros, 5-2.
After a loss on the road to the Dayton Dust Devils on Wednesday, 3-1, the Wave’s final record in D1-A and overall is 1-14-1.
Coach Miguel Orduna said the match against Fernley was the kind of game that the team had been looking for the entire season.
“Our team record shows losses,” Orduna said. “But day by day we learn as a team what we’ve been doing wrong and right, and we try to take those small wins. Fernley wasn’t an easy win by any stretch, and I’d say we were pretty evenly matched, so we definitely earned it.
The first three goals in the match against the Vaqueros were all scored by the Wave’s Trevor Davis, the result of consecutively swift breakaways according to Orduna.
“In the match we focused strong on passing,” Orduna said, “and by the time he broke away, Fernley just didn’t have the speed to keep up.”
The next goal of the match belonged to Dustin Hopkins, who Orduna has said was a staple for the team throughout the season.
Hopkins scored when the ball was deflected to a Fernley fullback from the midfield, and Hopkins was able to steal it away, in the right place at the right time.
The last goal of the match belonged to the Wave’s Mario Ugalde and was a penalty kick on Fernley’s goal.
Ugalde has been a frequent scorer in the second half of the season and a very impressive player, according to Orduna who commended Ugalde for his role as a leader on the team.
“As a senior,” Orduna said, “Mario pushed the underclassmen to bring their full potential.”
This season was full of many close losses for the Wave, often attributed to issues passing and outrunning the enemy defenders on breakaways that would’ve prevented shutouts as well as picked up momentum.
For the next season, Orduna said the first change he is pushing for is for the Wave to have a preseason. The late start the team had didn’t give them the time they needed to deal with the small things in which they struggled in each match before coming together as a team.
This was Orduna’s first year coaching the Wave, and despite the final record, he said he was pleased by the team’s performance.
“I couldn’t be happier with the way the boys played this season,” Orduna said. “This team really has a lot of heart, and I’m just very, very happy with what I saw from each game. I know that if they keep that positive attitude they will be very successful in life and in the next season. I’m looking forward to coming back the next season.”