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Heat tops Tornados; PDL teams play again tonight

By NINO CARDENAS, LAREDO MORNING TIMES

06/02/2007

The Laredo Heat found its offensive mojo and routed the Dallas-Fort Worth Tornados 4-1 Friday night at the Student Activity Complex in Premier Development League action.

The night was memorable for head coach Israel Collazo for several reasons. His team had its highest offensive output of the season, took sole possession of first place in the Mid-South Division and Olivia Infante said yes to his marriage proposal after the game.

Infante is the younger sister of Heat player Dionisio “Nicho” Infante, who had one of the four goals in the contest and a hand in another.

Also finding the back of the net were Isaac Morales, Juan De Dios Ibarra and James Flores.

Not helping the Tornados was the fact that some of their players couldn’t attend the game due to personal business and the team bus arrived to the stadium minutes before the kickoff.

With a days rest under their belts the Heat (4-1-2, 14 points) expect a much different Tornados (2-3-1, 7 points) team tonight for the capper.

A Heat win and they extend their division lead to six points ahead of the idle El Paso Patriots (3-3-2, 11 points) and the Tornados are left with an uphill battle.

With the strong wind against their backs the Heat surged to a 3-0 lead in the first half.

The first two goals were off deflections from DFW keeper Brian Sarber.

In the 10th minute Infante sent a cannon from the outside right point of the box that was deflected by Sarber towards the cleats of a diving Joshua Fender whose shot bounced off the left post and was collected by Morales who blasted the ball home for the opening lead.

The Tornados were out of sync for the majority of the night as the Heat dictated the pace of the contest and was the aggressor for the game?s entirety.

Their second goal came about by the same means of the first with Jacob Almack sending a shot in, that was deflected by the goalie then blocked a shot from Fender that landed in the feet of Infante for the game winner in the 37th minute.

The Heat kept on pressuring and broke through once again in the 45th minute when an ill conceived pass back to the Dallas goalie was intercepted by Infante.

With Sarber out of position and Infante racing towards the goal, Sarber reached out and tripped Infante as soon as he was getting by him. Ibarra took the penalty shot and drilled it for the 3-0 lead.

The Tornados failed to take advantage of the wind in the second half as Laredo controlled the sphere and kept on pressing.

Hector “Gota” Vallejo set-up Flores? goal in the 55th minute. Vallejo played his way deep into the right side of the box before sending a centering pass to a wide open Flores.

The Tornados were able to get one past goalie Ryan Cooper in the 67th minute thanks to a penalty shot by Brono Guardo. The Heat out shot the Tornados 14-6 in the contest.