Women’s soccer was a hot topic this summer as the United States National Women’s soccer team dominated the rest of the world and brought home its second consecutive title in three World Cup Finals appearances.

The Grossmont College Women’s soccer team looks to keep the sport a hot topic through the entire fall semester.
The Griffins began that journey on a hot August afternoon.

Temperatures may have been flirting with 100 degrees on Aug. 30 at Grossmont, but not even scorching temperatures would stop the women’s soccer team from performing in their home opener. The warm, gentle breeze flew across Grossmont’s newly installed turf field, as it would be the ladies first game on it.

“Oh yeah, we’re excited about this new field,” Head Coach Jason Aldous said.

Grossmont opened this season with just three sophomores on the roster. This means new talent is coming in, but with that comes a lot of inexperience. That inexperience doesn’t seem to worry Aldous.

“We are a young team. Not the biggest team in terms of numbers,” the coach said, “but the talent is some of the best
I’ve ever had.”

The unheralded Griffins kicked off their home opener against the Mt. San Jacinto Eagles. Both teams had each lost
their first contest the week before. The Griffins were in possession first. And once the clock started rolling, it was game on. The Eagles and Griffins went back and forth in time of possession in this defensive battle.

The Eagles eventually broke through, scoring the first goal of the match, toward the end of the first half and would go
into halftime with the lead. Going into the second half, there didn’t seem to be any one team dominating the field.

However, coming out of halftime, it was obvious to see the Griffins had made some adjustments to their play as they seemed to have the edge on the possession battle over the Eagles.

“We were panicking when we got the ball,” Aldous said, talking about his halftime adjustments, “It was just the girls
calming down and knocking the ball around and finding the spaces between and behind the defenders.”

Calming down seemed to do the trick as the Griffins would score their first and only goal of the match within the
final 15 minutes of the contest.

The match would end via time running out with each team scoring one goal, which resulted in a tie score. Although the Griffins would have loved to have brought the home crowd of roughly 20 people a victory, they just fell short of a win on that sweltering afternoon.

“Overall, I’m happy,” Aldous said after the game. “I thought we were the better team in creating opportunities, we just didn’t finish.

“That’s the hardest thing to do; create opportunities, and we’re doing it, but no one likes to tie,” he continued .
The tie against the Eagles brought Grossmont’s record to 0-1-1 on the season. Their next home game will take place
Sept. 27 against San Diego City College.