Angel Gomez had his eye on the first hat trick of the Marshalltown boys’ soccer season. But when his buddy had the chance to put the game away, Gomez kept quiet.
Gomez scored two goals and the Bobcats secured their third-straight win, beating the doors off Fort Dodge 10-0 in Friday night’s Iowa Alliance Conference North Division clash at Leonard Cole Field.
Marshalltown outshot the Dodgers 51-1 in a one-sided affair that ended 12 minutes, 54 seconds early because of the mercy rule.
It was the Bobcats’ second mercy-rule win in their last three, joining last Thursday’s 10-0 drubbing of Waterloo East.
Gomez wanted to be the one to end Friday’s contest with what would have been his third goal of the game, but senior Jovani “Gio” Mendoza made a good run that led to a great scoring chance. Gomez, making a parallel run, didn’t call for the ball as Mendoza dribbled in on net.
“Yeah I was trying to get three, but my friend Gio wanted to get a goal,” Gomez said. “So I would have asked for it, but I wanted him to score the goal that ended it for us.”
Gomez and Mendoza represented two of Marshalltown’s eight goal-scorers in the match. Rafael Ortiz also tallied two goals as the Bobcats (7-4-1, 3-1-0) secured second place in the Alliance North.
Fort Dodge (2-7-0, 1-3-0) sustained its third consecutive loss. The Dodgers have scored just five goals all season.
Marshalltown got six goals in the first half.
“We really tried to keep up our mental game,” said MHS head coach Scott Johannes, “working on that mental focus when you’re playing somebody that has struggled and struggled to score goals. We knew Fort Dodge would be a physical team, but we really just kept to our own play and we played plenty of guys while at the same time keeping that focus going.”
Luis Monge Jr. and Antoni Rodriguez Torres both had a goal and two assists, while Andres Ordaz Zambrano had a goal and an assist.
Monge assisted on Marshalltown’s first two goals of the game as the Bobcats jumped out to the early. He worked a give-and-go with Aaron Ordaz Zambrano for the first goal at the 5:13 mark, and he passed to Ortiz for the second goal at 7:25.
Andres Ordaz Zambrano made it 3-0 when his hard shot from the top of the box deflected off the back of a Fort Dodge defender and into the net, and Gomez got creative with his first of two goals.
Angel Chavez Ordaz put a pass into the box for Gomez, who flicked the ball over his shoulder and scored with a back-heel kick.
“It means a lot,” Gomez said of his two-goal game. “My family comes out to support me and that makes me happy.”
Armando Estrada scored with 3:09 left in the first half to bring the Bobcats to their 6-0 lead, registering 30 shots and 16 of them on net.
Most of Fort Dodge’s resistance came from freshman goalkeeper Alex Berger, who finished with 17 saves. The Dodgers’ only shot of the match arrived with 22 minutes left in the second half.
“When you play a slower team you tend to play slow, and we really didn’t want to do that,” Johannes said. “But when you’re only playing a half (of the field), in some ways it’s hard to get in a rhythm because you’re not moving like you’re supposed to.”
MHS had no problem maneuvering on a shortened field and the final result reflected that.
“We still had to go 100 percent,” Gomez said. “They kept up with us, but at the end of the day we mercy’d them.”
Gomez got his second goal at the 63:37 mark and had one more shot on goal three minutes later, but it found the awaiting hands of Berger. Just 21 seconds later, Mendoza’s goal ended the match.
“We haven’t had [a hat trick] this year, but we’ve had a handful of guys get two (goals),” Johannes said. “You feel for a team like Fort Dodge that struggles and you don’t want to act like you’re running up the score by leaving your starters in, but they need the playing time. It would be easy to leave them in until you get [the hat trick], but it’s nice when you share the weight.
“We’ve got good depth. On any given night we could easily go 16-, 17-deep. Right now we’ve got a roster of 26 and they all played tonight. It helps the team morale. Everyone understands their role and you want them to feel a part of it and they do.”
The Bobcats are back at it Tuesday with a match at Des Moines North.