BY TED APODACA: After 90 scoreless minutes, the CIF-SS Division 5 championship game between Garden Grove High and Santiago High came down to a penalty kick shootout.<\/p>\n

 It was a nerve-wracking way to decide a CIF title, but when it came down to it, Argonaut sophomore goalie Jose Vega made two big saves to give Garden Grove the title, 3-2 on Friday at Warren High of Downey.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

BY TED APODACA: After 90 scoreless minutes, the CIF-SS Division 5 championship game between Garden Grove High and Santiago High came down to a penalty kick shootout.<\/p>\n

 It was a nerve-wracking way to decide a CIF title, but when it came down to it, Argonaut sophomore goalie Jose Vega made two big saves to give Garden Grove the title, 3-2 on Friday at Warren High of Downey.<\/p>\n

The fact that the CIF title came down to two Garden Grove League teams was not a surprise to Argonaut head coach Matt Grenert. Santiago had a tie and a win against the Argonauts to earn the league title and grab the top seed in the playoffs.<\/p>\n

“I think it says something about our city, I think it says something about the players we [Garden Grove League] have,” Grenert said.<\/p>\n

The game went back and forth most of the match. In the first half, the Cavaliers seemed to apply most offensive pressure, but the Argonauts had the momentum in much of the second half.<\/p>\n

However, strong goalie play, with solid support in front, kept the game scoreless through 80 minutes and two overtime periods. With about 25 minutes left in the second half, the Cavaliers had a through ball that Israel Celis set up for solid shot attempt. However, junior Dominik Sanchez was able to get in front of the shot to deflect it off line.<\/p>\n

About five minutes later, the Argonauts had a solid rush up the left side. However, on the lead pass up field, Santiago goalie Elmer Rodriguez rushed out to cut out the pass before a shot attempt.<\/p>\n

In the final three minutes, the Argonauts had three corner kick opportunities, but, despite some traffic in front of the goal, the Cavaliers were able to turn the chances away.<\/p>\n

Santiago had a big opportunity with about 20 seconds left in regulation. A long throw-in near the Argonaut goal was batted around in front and cleared to the top of the goal box. Celis corralled the ball at the top of the box and got off a strong shot on goal. But the ball sailed just high.<\/p>\n

Despite opportunities on both sides, the game would go to a penalty-kick shootout. After both teams scored on their first attempt, Santiago’s second attempt sailed high.<\/p>\n

Garden Grove captain Derek Ayala scored on a high right shot to give the Argonauts a 2-1 lead. Santiago tied the shootout with a high right shot by Humberto Garcia, but after a middle shot goal by Elian Arreola gave the Argonauts a 3-2 lead, Vega made his second save to the seal the championship.<\/p>\n

Grenert, a Garden Grove High alumnus and city resident, was emotional after the game. It was a culmination of his 13^{th<\/sup> year of coaching the program. He said his team hit its stride at just the right time.<\/p>\n}

“We actually started playing our best stuff towards the end of the year, and we started to get, we just kind of started to get what we wanted to do… some of the games we played in the playoffs, we maybe weren’t the best team, but we just did whatever it takes to win the game,” Grenert said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BY TED APODACA: After 90 scoreless minutes, the CIF-SS Division 5 championship game between Garden Grove High and Santiago High came down to a penalty kick shootout.  It was a nerve-wracking way to decide a CIF title, but when it came down to it, Argonaut sophomore goalie Jose Vega made two big saves to give […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":64,"featured_media":1377,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3214],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ocn.archives.ocnnewspapers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1376"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ocn.archives.ocnnewspapers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ocn.archives.ocnnewspapers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ocn.archives.ocnnewspapers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/64"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ocn.archives.ocnnewspapers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1376"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ocn.archives.ocnnewspapers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1376\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4771,"href":"https:\/\/ocn.archives.ocnnewspapers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1376\/revisions\/4771"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ocn.archives.ocnnewspapers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1377"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ocn.archives.ocnnewspapers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ocn.archives.ocnnewspapers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ocn.archives.ocnnewspapers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}