Warriors Out Shoot United

Rochester's Dustin James (#8) starts a breakaway as United's Kyle Kenzie (#5) and the Warrior's Trent Hitchcock (#1) pursue.

Freshman Ricardo Zimudio and Conor Sathre had five major skirmishes on Tuesday evening. Sathre won most of the battles as the goalie for Toledo-Winlock United, but it was Zimudio, a forward for Rochester that won the last one during a shoot-out that gave the Warriors a 5-4 victory in and 1A Evergreen Soccer game at Winlock.

It was Zimudio that struck first for the Warriors in the 36th minute when he chased a lose ball and somehow managed to get it by Sathre.

Zimudio then had three breakaways between the 62 and 84th minute. Three times, United Keeper Sathre aggressively met Zimudio and fearlessly wrestled the ball away while legally undercutting him. Twice the Rochester forward ended up writhing in pain.

Ricardo Zimudio (#9) scored the Warrior's only goal and then put the last ball of a shoot-out in the net to move Rochester into the 1A Evergreen winners column.

In the 69th minute, United’s Max Hernandez scored a long awaited goal from about 25 yards with an assist from Tyler Diamond.

What was on both coaches minds were the players that were not on the field. Rochester played most of the game with no subs. United had seven starters sitting in the stands.

Zimudio (#9) and Deweit Doleman (#11) battle United's Eric West for a ball on Tuesday.

“It is like night and day,” said United Head Coach Hugo Molina. “The entire defense and two outside guys were not playing. We really noticed it on defense”.

Rochester Coaches Jamie Black and Domigus Zimudio share time as the head coach of the Warriors.

"Those kids, all 11 of them did an excellent job for the first game,” said Zimudio.

“They are usually a really strong team within the league” Black said of the team from Toledo with a few Winlock players sprinkled in.

United kickers missed the first two shots in the tie-break putting Sathre in a quick hole. He was able to stop one but four Warriors managed to slip the ball by him for the winning margin.

Rochester plays Forks today.

Baseball Begins on Saturday

For many teams, baseball begins in earnest this week with a number of scrimmages and jamborees taking place on Saturday (look for a detailed schedule late Friday night or early Saturday here on Southwest Preps).

Since three of the four 1A teams came from the Trico and Evergreen, we have to look there for a lot of the talent.

The Rockets Zach Gehring at home plate after his third home run against Ilwaco last spring (he hit five on the day). Gehring joins a number of veteran Rocket players on this year's Castle Rock Baseball team.

Kalama has several players returning from their state runner-up team. La Roy, Brandon Walker and Robbie Sanders (remember the latter two from basketball?)bring the Chinooks a lot of talent. Castle Rock also brings a tremendous edge that gives them possiby their best squad among the football, basketball and baseball programs. I watched Zach Gehring hit five home runs in a game last spring and while the solid play of Dustin Hamilton and pitching of Mike Murray begins to illustrate the team's talent, the depth is substantial.

Rochester graduated a significant number of athletes, but still need to be considered a threat in the Evergreen Conference.

Rochester's Roster