Argueta nets game-winner

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COSTA MESA — This time with the wind blowing its way, the Estancia High boys’ soccer team still almost blew it.

But Rony Argueta made sure the Eagles would forget the madness. Estancia’s Aran Antunez delivered a ball deep in the box and Argueta in traffic headed in the game-winner with a minute to go. That gave the Eagles a 1-0 victory over Norwalk in the first round of the CIF Southern Section Division III playoffs. And, that helped erase the thought of those missed opportunities.

So many great scoring chances late for the Eagles and Coach Gannon Burks still kept his composure. But he started thinking of last year’s opening round of the CIF Division III playoffs.

Seventeen shots on goal, none hit the back of the net, resulting in a 1-0 loss.

There were the Eagles again in a tight home playoff match, inches from putting Friday’s first-round contest against visiting Norwalk away.

One goal is all they needed.

Eric Duarte, the striker nicknamed “pollo” tried. But Norwalk made sure to keep the chicken caged. Still, the senior, playing hurt, delivered a beautiful cross with two minutes left, but Estancia failed to score, standing on the goalkeeper’s doorstep with an open net.

Then there was Argueta, arguably the player with the most missed opportunities in the second half. The junior’s header off a corner kick was booted out by a defender in the 67th minute. Five minutes later, Argueta blasted a shot from 30 yards out, barely missing the upper left corner of the net.

Argueta got one more chance. He went back to using head, resulting in a heady play to end a thriller.

As Argueta sprinted toward the Estancia sideline to celebrate, teammates followed the defensive midfielder, and fans gave him high-fives. Finally Burks could rejoice, too.

“This is my first time in four years we got out of the first,” Burks said. “I finally got the monkey off my back.”

The Eagles (11-6-3) also made sure all the pressure was gone after beating Norwalk (12-6-2), the second-place team out of the Suburban League.

Before the Eagles broke from their celebratory huddle, Burks wanted to lead the chants.

“C’mon! Let me do this!” he said, making his way to the middle, where players began pushing him around, hitting him on the back, arms, legs, and messing his hair up.

The hair part was OK with Burks. He would’ve spent the next days pulling his hair out if Estancia hadn’t advanced to the next round to face No. 2-seeded Santa Ana (19-2-3) on Tuesday. The Saints moved on after beating Anaheim, 2-1, Friday.

A coin-flip will determine which school with play host in the second round.

Estancia, the Orange Coast League champ, during the regular season faced Santa Ana, which plays in the competitive Golden West League, where it finished runner-up to No. 1-seeded Saddleback (22-2-1). The match ended in a 3-3 tie with no positives to Duarte.

“Well, we were up 3-0,” said Duarte, the Orange Coast League MVP, who is still waiting for the official word whether he’ll get a full scholarship from Libscomb University, a Division I program in Nashville, Tenn. “In the last half they came back.”

“We get our heads down sometimes. It’s CIF now.”

Argueta kept the Eagles alive in a contest in which they played against the sun and wind in the first half.

Once they switched sides at halftime, Argueta figured things would change.

“In the second half I knew we were going to do something,” he said. “It came down to the end. I knew that my team needed me. I just had to finish it.”

Better to have Argueta carry the Eagles past the first round than depend on the winds.

DAVID CARRILLO PEÑALOZA may be reached at (714) 966-4612 or at david.carrillo@latimes.com.