Menlo-Atherton boys’ soccer holds off Burlingame

When the chips have been down for the Menlo-Atherton boys’ soccer team this season, senior Ethan Oro has come up big time and again.Oro’s most recent heroics came in Wednesday’s 3-2 home win over Burlingame. The Bears (4-1 PAL Bay, 8-2 overall) admittedly didn’t play a perfect game, as evidenced by their letting a 2-0 lead slip away when the Panthers tied it in the second half.But when M-A’s first-year head coach Leo Krupnik needed a big goal, he turned to Oro for a penalty kick in the 68th minute. And the red-hot, third-year varsity forward delivered his second goal of the game for the winning score.“He’s been in very good shape as of late and you want to give it to the guy who has the confidence,” Krupnik said. “I felt he was the right guy at that time.”It is the second time this season Oro has delivered a game-winner for M-A. In a 2-1 victory Jan. 8 against Hillsdale, the Bears trailed 1-0 in the first half before Oro scored a game-tying goal in the first half and converted the go-ahead score in the second. Wednesday marked Oro’s second multi-goal game of the season. He now has six goals on the year. All things being equal though, Oro said he would have preferred his team to simply maintain the lead they mounted in the first half.“I think we tried to dig deep,” Oro said. “We started the game well but we started lagging. … We got away from our game of possessing the ball a lot more.”M-A did have a strong showing through most of the first half, before losing two key players — sophomore Nicolas Jandeleit and senior Kyle Smith — to injuries. And against a team like Burlingame (0-5, 1-9), which plays a better quality of soccer than its paltry record indicates, the loss of key personnel proved costly.“I’m proud of our boys,” Burlingame senior forward Matt Allen said. “We haven’t had the best start to our season … but we’ve fallen short by one goal here, one goal there. We just have to find our way to get that one more goal. But it didn’t happen today.”M-A started in dominating fashion, scoring twice early in the first half. Jandeleit got the Bears got on the board in the 12th minute on a swift advance. After goalkeeper Ari Eisner booted the ball to midfield, senior defender Patrick Quinn advanced it into Jandeleit. Despite receiving the ball in a sea of Burlingame defenders, Jandeleit controlled it quickly and drew Panthers goalie Lucas Flygare out. After darting past Flygare, Jandeleit walked in for an easy empty-net goal.M-A doubled its lead in the 17th minute on a nice forward set. Smith sent in a cross-field pass taken by Oro at the right corner of the penalty box. Oro flanked away from the right post with a dribble before executing a most impressive spin-kick, wheeling for a cross-goal shot beyond the reach of the diving Flygare to give the Bears a 2-0 lead. But Burlingame was able to get on the board before halftime. After an excellent chance that saw Allen receive a deep pass and have a header punched out at the last second by Eisner, the Panthers earned a corner kick. Burlingame cashed in on it, as Chris Denney received the corner kick at the top of the penalty box and sent a rocket into left goal to cut M-A’s lead to 2-1.Then midway through the second half, Burlingame began mounting a more consistent offensive front.“Frankly, I thought we were outplaying M-A,” Burlingame head coach Jakob Kirschenbaum said. “But you can’t underestimate a strong team like that.”Allen earned the game-tying goal by muscling through two M-A defenders off the left post deep in the penalty box. The senior had to literally push his way past the second one to earn a short strike to tie it 2-2.Less than two minutes later, Allen nearly gave the Panthers the lead on another great chance. Burlingame’s Fernando Sanchez exacted a cross pass into Allen, who controlled it at the same spot from where he scored his previous goal. From a flat-footed stance, Allen buzzed a crisp shot toward the near post, but it wasn’t quite tight enough, allowing Eisner to deflect it with a diving save. One minute later, the dynamic M-A front produced the penalty kick that proved the game-winner. It was the 68th minute when Bears sophomore Jean Claverie surged into the keeper’s box looking to score, but got pulled down from behind by the Burlingame defense. The penalty sent Oro to the line to give M-A the victory.“It wasn’t a pretty win, but we’ll take it and move on,” Oro said.The victory was a big bounce-back with for the Bears. Currently tied for second-place with 12 points in the Peninsula Athletic League Bay Division with South City, M-A fell to South City 5-3 last Friday, after the Bears played most of the game with 10 players.For the Panthers, the feeling was they let their first league victory escape them.“We let it get away from us,” Kirschenbaum said.