With 18 freshman on the roster, the men’s soccer team is struggling to find some cohesiveness as  it fell to Victor Valley College 3-1, in the game last Saturday.

Fatigue and heat could have contributed to the teams’ lack luster play. The game was played in the high desert and delayed because the officials showed up an hour late.

“It was really hot, and it was two hours away and the referees came in late, so that interfered with our mind set,” sophomore midfielder Ozzy Rodriguez said.

Falling behind 2-0, the Warriors tried to get back in the game as freshman forward Dani Guzman scored the only goal for the Warriors.

The team drops to 1-2-1 and coach John Britton was not pleased with the effort.

“Perhaps we expected an easy game, we didn’t prepare ourselves mentally, and we paid the price,” Britton said.

The level of effort was not there and it was a disappointing loss to a very good team, Britton added.

Ozzy Rodriguez said he believes his team needs to give a better effort.

“Many of the players are lazy. A lot of the men don’t have intensity it shows in practices,” Rodriguez said.

“Not enough talking and I would take blame in that, there was no communication,” Rodriguez said.

Without communication within the men’s team, the players won’t perform as well, Rodriguez added.

“Jess (Chamberlain) and Alex (Perez) have been putting in hard work and they go all out,” Rodriguez said.

Both players have been a positive influence on the men’s soccer team and contribute to the bringing out the best in the players, he added.

Last Tuesday the women’s soccer team tied in a scoreless game against San Diego Mesa College.

Coach Jaymie Baquero is very optimistic going forward, but believes her team should have won, she said.

“We should have won we were starting to find our feet, we started to play a lot better, we created more opportunities and our defense was more organized,” Baquero said.

“We did a lot better than we usually do, they didn’t dominate as much we didn’t make that many mistakes,” Jasmine Brink, defender, said. “We had had a lot of shots on goal and much better passes.”

By talking a lot more, the women played much better together, she said.

“There is many small things to improve on the women’s soccer team,” Brink added.

The team has many players playing out of position, Brink said.

“We have a good team we have a lot of people playing out of position,” Brink, defender, said.

The team played very well overall, the talent and skills are there, Brittany Brown, outsidemid, said.

“It is a work in progress, the team is still getting to know each team player’s style, we need more time to know each other,” Brown said.

Baquero is very proud and is confident the women’s soccer team will have a succesful outcome  for the next game, she said.

The next game is tomorrow at home against Alan Hancock College at 5 p.m.