West Valley Caps Season With 3rd Place Finish

Huntington Beach, CA - In a rematch of the 2019 CCCAA Northern California Regional Championships, West Valley College exploded for five goals in the fourth quarter to finish 3rd place at the 2019 CCCAA State Championships. The Vikings held off Sierra College for a 13-7 victory.

Sierra drew first blood on the afternoon, when Cierra Crouch opened the scoring in the third minute of action. West Valley would go on to score three of the next four goals to jump out in front 3-2, but a goal by Sierra's Angie Calzada would even up the score at the end of the first.

Giovanna Valente Cardenuto, who scored two of West Valley's first three goals, kept things rolling by giving the Vikings a 4-3 edge it's 5:17 left in the first half. Calzada would even things up for the Wolverines, but West Valley answered with a pair of goals to go up 6-4 after Nadja Novakovic finished a 6-on-5 chance for the Vikings. Only a goal at the buzzer by Kate Baltzer would keep the Wolverines close out the break down 5-6.

In the third, it was all West Valley as Novakovic scored the only two goals of the quarter to put West Valley up 8-5. Sierra would come back with two strikes in the opening minutes of the fourth quarter, to scratch there way to back to within a score. That deficit didn't last long though as Novakovic jump started a 5-0 run by the Vikings to close out the game, just 16 seconds after the previous Sierra score.

In the win, Novakovic had a day on the offensive end of the pool having a hand in over 75% of the goals on the board. Novakovic scored a game high six goals and handed out a game high four assists in the win. Valente Cardenuto added four scores, while goalie Raquel de Pinho recorded 19 saves. For Sierra, Calzada and Baltzer each scored a pair.