From the beginning to the end of district play, it’s been a tough road for the Rattlers. District 26-6A is a competitive group from top to bottom. Taking the No. 1 spot in the district and the state is Lake Travis, a team that San Marcos almost defeated in their match on Feb. 25.
Throughout the season, the Rattlers have come close with their opponents. In many games, they’ve lost by only one goal, including matches against Buda Hays, Austin Akins and even top-ranked Lake Travis. This trend continued in their final game of the 2020-21 season.
The Rattlers fell to the Austin Bowie Bulldogs on Monday night inside San Marcos Toyota Rattler Stadium, where they dropped a close game, 3-2.
Despite the loss, head coach Lisa Mazur is proud of her team and the effort they gave in their season finale. She said it was all for the seniors.
“I thought we played tough,” Mazur said. “We matched them play-for-play, aggressiveness-for-aggressiveness … it just fell short, but I thought we had a good game. I couldn’t have asked for more tonight, I couldn’t have asked for the effort that they gave for each other. Proud of the effort in their last game.”
All nine of the seniors started the match and it was a battle throughout the first half. Both teams were able to get a few looks at the goal, but the ball was going everywhere but the back of the net. Seniors Jose Duenez and Jaime Ramirez both had shot attempts, and senior goalkeeper Jonas Perez had made great saves to keep the Rattlers in the game.
It wasn’t until the last five minutes of the opening half when the Bulldogs (14-4-4, 9-2-3 district) made their first goal of the game. They were only up by one going into halftime.
During the second half, the Rattlers (4-13-1, 1-12-1 district) played stronger than the first, but both teams came out of the break with intensity. The Bulldogs and the Rattlers had free kicks early on, but each were unsuccessful. Although, Bowie came right back and made their second goal of the game to increase their lead with 34 minutes left in the match. A few minutes later, the Rattlers tried to respond back with a shot attempt from senior forward Melvin Molina, but it went straight into the arms of the Bulldogs’ goalkeeper.
Midway through the final half, San Marcos was able to get on the board with a goal from Ramirez. Bowie answered back right away, as they got their third goal of the game less than a minute later. This didn’t stop the Rattlers, though. With less than 10 minutes left in the finale, the hosts scored again off a deflection from a corner kick. Senior Saul Vargas made the goal from Molina. They were only down by one goal, so this gave the Rattlers some motivation to potentially tie the game. Ultimately, they were defeated, but San Marcos didn’t stop fighting until the clock hit zero.
After their second goal, Mazur thought her team could tie the game. She said that sometimes it comes down to the details and maybe even a touch of good luck.
“Sometimes in sports, you need a little bit of luck,” Mazur said. “I thought, ‘Dang, we’re hanging in there, we can do it.’ We were pressing, we had them on their heels and, you know, we just couldn’t get that little bit of luck to get things to go our way.”
Luckily, COVID-19 didn’t impact the Rattlers as much as other teams this season. Games were able to be moved around, and the only small issue they dealt with was not consistently being at school every day. It’s hoped that next season the team can go back to normal operations for the school year.
The Rattlers are losing nine players, including Molina, who is about to begin training for his tryout with the Austin FC 2002-04 age group development team next month. Even though they’re losing some great players, there’s a good group of young talent coming in. There are also some sophomores on the team already. Mazur said it’s a good core of underclassmen and that she’s glad they have seen how hard the varsity squad works, despite being at the bottom of the district.
“We have a great group of freshmen coming in,” Mazur said. “I think that them seeing this effort that the varsity gives day in and day out, we have a tough district. It’s hands down, from number one to number eight, they’re all good. And for us being eighth, I hate to even say that because it’s not indicative of our play here of how hard they played and how good our district is because we are a good team.”
The Rattlers are going to be a fairly young group for next few years and it’ll be interesting to see how they develop in a tough district.
