By Jeremy McDonald

jeremymcdonald73@gmail.com

SALEM, Ore.–   Angel-Nicolai Herrera anchored his defense and made sure that the Beaverton goal in the 39th minute, poked in by Cody Cardenas in traffic, was the only goal that got by him in West Salem’s tough 1-0 defeat to the Beavers on Thursday afternoon.

The senior Goalkeeper had roughly ten saves in the game with his defense giving him enough time to set up his read-and-react time to start the season.

“It’s really nice to be able to put everyone out on the field and make the saves that are necessary.  Even though they’re simple, they’re always live savers for me,” Herrera said.  “I felt like we did a good job, if anything towards the end of the game we could’ve done better once we were getting tired.  But overall, we did a pretty good job for it being our first game.”

The Titans were aggressive, they had opportunities set-up in the first twenty minutes of the game, but West couldn’t capitalize in the midday heat.  Giving Beaverton some time to find their legs that they turned into pressure.  Something that West Salem met with open hands, looking and hungry to improve as they look towards their second game of the year against Lake Oswego on the road on Wednesday.

“It’s going to help us a lot, so we can get that quick attack and be able to score goals out of counterattacks.  It’s going to help us a lot,” Herrera said.  “We just have to put more effort in than we do in the training sessions.  We got to put more than we have, we just got to keep working hard.

“It’s going to fire us up a whole lot.  This first loss is going to end up teaching us what we lack and what we’re strong in.  Defense we’re strong at, offensively we need to be a lot better and take shots.”

The Titans will host Forest Grove on September 9 for their next home game at 4pm.

Photos By Jeremy McDonald