LIGHTWEIGHTS: Mini-Bell battle

Steve Virgen

This week in lightweights ...

The winter season sports season came to an end as crosstown rivals

Estancia High and Costa Mesa battled for a Pacific Coast League

championship in boys frosh-soph soccer Friday.

The Eagles captured the championship after freshman Armando Gavilan

found the net with less than seven minutes remaining. If the Mustangs had

won they would have shared the title with Estancia. The Eagles earned a

2-1 victory over Mesa earlier in the season.

Freshman Noe Martinez got Estancia on the scoreboard first in the

opening minutes.

Estancia Co-Coach Robert Castellano said Martinez is the team’s

leading scorer and he provides most of the offense, leading the Eagles to

an 8-0 PCL record, 14-0-2 overall.

Mesa (13-4-1, 6-2-0 in league) tied the game when Hector Martinez

scored on a penalty kick. Martinez, who led the Mustangs with 12 goals

this season, is the younger brother of senior Trinidad Hernandez, the

leading scorer on the varsity. Sophomore Alex Contreras finished with

nine goals for the frosh-soph Mustangs.

Castellano, who co-coaches with Esaul Mendoza, said the Eagles were

without their starting goalie, Scott Harris, for the title game Friday.

Harris was out because of illness and Uber Gallegos stepped in to record

six saves.

Martinez, Gavilan and freshman Ismael Sandoval should make varsity

next season. Mendoza’s younger brother, Luis, is a 5-foot-1 midfielder

who has been the leader of this year’s PCL champions. Castellano said

Luis “is the heart of the midfield,” who helped the Eagle improve

throughout the season.

“It looked kind of down early in the season,” Castellano said. “We

worked really hard. I told them they had a lot of potential. And then,

they refused to lose.”

Mesa goalie John Ruiz, a sophomore, and the Mustangs’ defense allowed

just 18 goals this season and the offense scored 51 goals.

First-year Coach Matt Dunn, who played varsity last year at Mesa, was

excited to see 29 players join the team this season. He said freshman

David Barnett will be a player to watch in the years to come. He might

have been on the varsity team, but the roster was filled. Barnett will

actually be bumped to varsity for the CIF Southern Section Division IV

playoffs.

Dunn also said, sophomores Nathan Hunter, Tyler Waldron, and Christian

Lopez and freshman Carlos Gutierrez were vital to the Mustangs’

second-place finish.

“They were really the heart of this team,” Dunn said.