HARLINGEN — The Harlingen South Lady Hawks were shaken but not broken Friday evening after defeating the crosstown rival Harlingen Lady Cardinals 2-1 at Boggus Stadium.
The Lady Hawks scored early in the game and held on for their first district win of the season.
“They are an outstanding team,” said Harlingen South head coach Omar Pedroza referencing the Lady Cardinals. “We took advantage of the chance that we had and they had some opportunities to score too, but that’s just the way the ball bounces sometimes and tonight it just bounced in our favor.
“Both teams had chances but we just took advantage of ours and that was the difference tonight. But they are a really good team.”
Harlingen South’s AliseGarza was the hero of the night for the Lady Hawks. Garza put away her first goal of the evening within 10 minutes of the start of the match. Garza found herself at the right place at the right time and put South up 1-0 early.
However, Harlingen’s dangerous attack didn’t sit back and wait as Harlingen South found itself scrambling to make two goal line saves before the end of the first half.
Garza made Harlingen pay again in the second after the Lady Cardinals were unable to clear a throw in. South’s Caroline Grannum threw a long ball inside the box which sailed past a Lady Cardinal Defender and right onto Garza’s lap for a 2-0 lead.
“Honestly Harlingen are such a good team and we know they got some new freshman players that are good so we knew we had to come out strong and we had to come out hard for this game,” said Garza. “But it feels great to start off the district with a win because a lot of teams were doubting us and saying that Harlingen were going to have such a good team but we definitely showed up and did what we had to do and shut them down as soon as possible.”
Kay-Loni Vasquez made things interesting with 13 minutes remaining in the contest. Vasquez’s goal cut the deficit to 2-1 but the Lady Cardinals were unable to find the tying goal as time expired.
