Pahrump stomps the Rattlers for sixth victory of season

If you want to see great art, you go to the Louvre in Paris, but if you want to see great soccer, Pahrump is the town for you. The Lady Trojans posted their sixth win of the season beating the Mojave Rattlers 12-0 and improved to 6-0-1 on the year and 3-0 in league.

The Trojans played their third game of the week against Mojave. The girls dispatched Cheyenne 3-1 and battled Green Valley, ranked seventh in the coach’s poll, to a 0-0 tie on Monday and Tuesday. (Trojans are ranked fifth.) One would think the Trojans were tired, but Coach Pam Larmouth said not even close.

“Last night we ran for 80 minutes against Green Valley and it was a brutal game. We had to sub the wings because they run more than anyone else, but other than that — conditioning was not the issue,” she said.

Their opponents came into Pahrump hoping to beat the Trojans after losing to them last year in double digits. In last year’s game the score was so bad, Rattlers Coach Jaime Alvarez walked off the field with his team giving no explanation. This year the Rattlers had just come from a game with Faith Lutheran, where they only lost 2-0. They were 0-3 in league coming into the game with the Trojans.

It took the Trojans the first half to warm up their scoring engine. The team only scored three goals in the first half of play.

Gabby Vasquez was coming off an injury to her ankle and scored the first goal. She said she felt slow, but felt good otherwise. Her first goal of the night wobbled in for the first score of the game and she was not complaining.

“I wanted to kick it with my left leg but I got scared I would miss it and my other leg came across — I didn’t even know I made it,” said Vasquez.

After the half, the Trojans came back to the field and played with a fierce sense of urgency. Sladek scored five more goals and the team just kept scoring. Mojave would kick it off, the Trojans would steal the ball and seconds later they would be kicking off again. If you blinked for a second, you missed a goal.

In the second half, Sydney Sladek scored with an assist from defender Lexi Smith, who threw the ball in from the sideline near the Mojave goal and Sladek used her head to score her fifth goal of the game. When asked if it was a practiced play, Sladek remarked, “On the throw-ins I usually flick it on for a runner and I got lucky and it went in.” After her sixth goal the referee asked Pam Larmouth to put Sladek in the backfield.

Sydney Sladek was in the game to break the state record of 154 career goals in high school soccer held by Tracie Prado who scored her goals from 1998-2000. She needs one more to tie and two to break this record.

“The refs wanted us to put Sydney in the backfield and we told them she was in there to break a state record. She still needed some more goals. They said she had scored enough, and I told them, ‘What if she gets hurt the next game and can’t break it?’ She has to get them when she can get them. This record has not been broken in 14 years so this is a big deal. We are playing her up top as much as we can. The whole team wants her to break this record. It is not important to her, but important to us,” Larmouth said.

Assistant Director of the Nevada Interscholastic Activities Association Donnie Nelson said there is no mercy rule in soccer and it is up to the coaches to pull the plug. He said more than likely in this situation the Mojave coach called the game. This was not the case, the refs called the game because their boss had told them not to let the scores go over 10 goals.

“It’s important for coaches to communicate in this situation,” he said. “If you are a coach in this situation, you tell the other coach, ‘Can you do me a favor here, we just need one more goal and we are not trying to run up the score on you. We have a kid who is breaking a state record. I owe you one.’”

Of course, the Mojave coach wasn’t communicating and didn’t even shake Larmouth’s hand after the game.

The Trojans’ coaches did a nice job spreading the goals around, even some of the defenders had some goals. Junior defender Alyssa Turner had two goals.

“We let all the team members try to score. We have some defenders who are better than some teams’ forwards. That’s why when they tell us to put our defenders forward, I say ‘sure.’ Lexi, Brittany and Alyssa can all score,” Larmouth said.

Last year Smith had 15 goals and was the third highest goal scorer on the team as a defender. In the race to see which defender scores the most goals for this year, Turner has 2, Smith and Klenczar have 1 apiece.

After scoring her first two goals of the season, Turner was all smiles.

“I scored my first two goals of the year. I am usually on the back line and normally pass the ball up to other players and usually don’t have any stats,” she said.

Turner was asked if there was any competition among the four defensive players to see who would score the most goals this season and she said it was all in fun. “During the Adelson game Brittany scored and I did not get a chance to score so when I scored today I told her, ‘We caught up to you Brittany.’”

Next week the Lady Trojans are on the road for two games against Clark and Western, Tuesday and Thursday. Both games start at 3 p.m.