A two goal performance from Viking forward Jeremiah Omishakin propelled Long Beach to a dominant 6-0 win in their final regular season game of the year against Rio Hondo on Nov. 3.
While LBCC had a strong first half, a 4 goal second half allowed the team to pull away.
“The guys are hungry. You saw, even at the last 20 minutes, we’re up by a couple goals and guys are still pressing and battling trying to score. We have a deep group and I’m very happy today with the performance,” said Coach Jorge Reyes.
Even with their slow start to the season, the Vikings have started to find a way to build chemistry and ultimately become a goal scoring machine during their conference games.
“It feels really good, I feel like the pieces are coming together at the right time. Early struggles at the beginning of the season, but we’re starting to prevail” Omishakin said.
For most of the first half, it looked like the Vikings would head into halftime 0-0. However, with some ingenuity and creativity, they would score twice just before the halftime whistle against a Rio Hondo defense that was quick and coordinated.
“It was just an ‘I understand it now’ moment,” Viking forward Kuliano Doty-Navarro said. “We knew that the goal was coming. It was just getting into our flow, we gotta learn to do that a lot quicker.”
Players on the team who rarely have a chance to show their talents had an opportunity to make their mark late in the match.
“Some of those guys haven’t had a lot of minutes, so they come very energized, they just want to score. The 2nd unit is ready too, I’ve always told these guys that we have the 2 best teams in the state so, you know, we play like it and guys come in and they’re ready,” said head coach Jorge Reyes.
Even with this mentality, the Vikings still expressed their desire to improve, giving credit to the coaching staff for seeing things that the players otherwise wouldn’t have been able to see and helping the team adjust to situations to the best of their abilities during halftime.
“You can see the field so much differently from standing on the sidelines than actually being on the field. Sometimes you’re not able to connect the puzzle pieces or move the chess pieces the same way you are, so being able to talk to our coach at halftime and hearing his perspective and what they were all saying, the game really changed,” Doty-Navarrao said.
With the mindset of wanting to improve and keep chasing after victories, the Vikings won’t just stop at regional champions, they aim to become state champions for the first time, especially with the momentum they carry.
“We’re not defending a name or anything like that. We’re just trying to go into our next goal. Our goal is to win, knowing what’s to come and the adversity we already had to face. Nothing changes, the state championship is the plan,” Doty-Navarro said.
The Vikings will begin their Southern Coast Conference tournament on Nov. 10 at 6:30 p.m against Cerritos College.
