This week is a busy one for me with 3 to 4 soccer games, 2 cross country meets, and 2 football games.  This post covers the first soccer game on Monday.

Dakota Ridge visited Pomona for a match at NAAC on Monday afternoon.  It was a really good game that suffered from some poor officiating.  At least the officiating was even both ways.  The thing that stood out to me was the main referee did not make a call when a Pomona player was hit in the face/eye right in front of him.  The player, obviously angry, made a hard tackle, but a legal tackle, on a Dakota Ridge Player, and the ref stopped the game, and told him to calm down, that just because he got hit in the face does not give him the right to swear and make aggressive plays that could injure someone.  Um, so you saw him get hit in the face?  (It was a hit, it was not just incidental contact)  Maybe if you would have called that foul then, you would not have to stop the game to talk to a player about making a legal, hard, aggressive tackle?

Other than the main official blowing some big calls, this was a very good and entertaining match.  Dakota Ridge and Pomona were well matched, and held each other scoreless for most of the first half until Dakota Ridge unloaded for 3 goals that seemed to come within a couple minutes of each other.

I felt that Pomona could have scored in the first half.  The captain for the Pomona Panthers was handling the ball very well in the box, but never pulled the trigger on a shot.  He would always passing the ball back out after absolutely juking 2 to 4 Dakota Ridge players.  This kid needs to launch a shot when he gets this close.  If he can break the ankles of a defender with his change of direction moves, he should be the leading scorer for Pomona.

So Dakota Ridge took a commanding 3-0 lead into halftime.  It was a beautiful day on the pitch at NAAC.  Sun was out, it was warm, but not too hot, and a good soccer game to boot.

When the second half started, the conditions on the field started to change.  The sun was starting to go down, which made for longer shadows from the bleachers and press box, and there were some nasty looking clouds starting to roll in.

I was really liking the golden hour light that was coming in, but the position of the field caused for some nasty shadows.  In the second half, it looked like Dakota Ridge put on Pomona uniforms, as like Dakota Ridge did in the first half, Pomona scored 3 quick goals to tie the game.

It looked like we might go into Sudden Death overtime, until the Pomona goalie could not get to a shot from Dakota Ridge.  Dakota Ridge would take a 4-3 lead and ended up winning the game.

This was a fun game to shoot, a lot of good balls, passes and shots.  To see more photos from this game, please visit MaxPreps.