{"id":4434,"date":"2025-10-22T17:02:42","date_gmt":"2025-10-22T17:02:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/briansumptersports.com\/?p=4434"},"modified":"2025-10-22T17:02:42","modified_gmt":"2025-10-22T17:02:42","slug":"down-a-man-cougars-drop-2-1-decision","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/briansumptersports.com\/?p=4434","title":{"rendered":"Down a man, Cougars drop 2-1 decision"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\"><strong>Upper Lake loses top player to yellow cards late in first half<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lake County Sports on Facebook<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>WILLITS &gt;&gt; Playing without Jaden Nunez most of the way, the Upper Lake Cougars fell 2-1 to the Willits Wolverines in North Central League I boys soccer action Tuesday at Willits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Nunez, one of the Cougars\u2019 top players, picked up a pair of yellow cards late in the first half and was ejected, forcing Upper Lake (1-9 league, 4-16 overall) to play a man down the rest of the way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cAt about the 35<sup>th<\/sup> minute, my center back Jaden Nunez was given a yellow \u2018for time wasting\u2019 on a goal kick that he ran to get the ball that was out of bounds. Tensions still being high, he said something to the ref that caused the second yellow.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Cougars suited up only 11 players for the game, so the 10 players left on the field had to play the entire way with no substitutes available.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Willits scored the only goal of the first half, but Upper Lake tied it midway through the second half on an Anthony Simondi through ball that teammate Eric Tinoco knocked into the net for a 1-1 tie.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Wolverines regained the lead with eight minutes left to play.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cWillits hit a deep shot that looked like it was going out but dipped,\u201d Santana said. \u201cThere was nothing my keeper (Alan Alvarado) could do anything about. He had a great game with 12 saves.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Added Santana, \u201cIt\u2019s a shame the game went the way it did. My defense played great and with Jaden out, all my other players really stepped up big time. George Rahmer, Exiel Godinez, Gavin Dooley and Slade Coltharp were my standouts on defense.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Upper Lake\u2019s season is down to two games. The Cougars hold their senior night Monday at home against Roseland Collegiate Prep at 5 p.m., then hit the road Tuesday to play Middletown.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Upper Lake loses top player to yellow cards late in first half Lake County Sports on Facebook WILLITS &gt;&gt; Playing without Jaden Nunez most of the way, the Upper Lake Cougars fell 2-1 to the Willits Wolverines in North Central League I boys soccer action Tuesday at Willits. Nunez, one of the Cougars\u2019 top players, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53,6,15,57],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/briansumptersports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4434"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/briansumptersports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/briansumptersports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briansumptersports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briansumptersports.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4434"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/briansumptersports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4434\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4435,"href":"https:\/\/briansumptersports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4434\/revisions\/4435"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/briansumptersports.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4434"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briansumptersports.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4434"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briansumptersports.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4434"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}