By Eric Poe/ sports editor
An abundance of clouds hovered over the SE Campus soccer field April 14, threatening to produce rain but never doing so. This correlated directly with the action, or lack thereof, on the field below with players standing around.
No soccer was actually played, and all six scheduled games forfeited because of poor attendance.
Even though no games were played, four teams advanced to the April 21 semifinals. Tejas FC, Azteca, SE FC and Moe’s Galaxy all made it by default.
The teams mostly scrimmaged during the day to at least get some soccer in, but it couldn’t match the intensity that a competitive game would have promised.
HPE instructor Evelyn Parkhurst said six forfeits was not what she expected.
“It was surprising,” she said. “We had two weekends of full games before that and then no games. It was surprising and disappointing.”
Latin FC, who “won” its first game of the day bowed out to Tejas FC when it had only four players show up, short of the minimum allowed five. The Latin FC players, including captain Luis Garcia, were disappointed they couldn’t play their rivals, Tejas FC.
“We were really looking forward to it,” he said. “It would’ve been fun. We got a rivalry going with them. We played them in the championship the last two years, and it would’ve been a close game if we had played those guys.”
Tejas FC captain Franky Figueroa said he tried to get the game to happen regardless of the small numbers and that his team would’ve come out on top.
“We told the refs we would sit someone out to make it even,” he said. “But the refs didn’t want to do it. But we would’ve won about 7-0.”
SE FC player Diego Zomela hopes actual soccer will be played in the next round of the playoffs.
“I guess whoever just has the most people show up next week will win the trophy,” he said. “If this happens next weekend, though, it’s ridiculous.”
