The Millikan boys’ soccer season came to an end yesterday afternoon at Harvard-Westlake, 1-0, in the second round of the CIF Div.1 playoffs.  Charlie Porter scored a beautiful header in the 44th minute from Will Oliver, and that’s all the Wolverine defense needed to protect the home field turf.

“I’m very happy with the effort, but it just didn’t happen for us,” said Millikan head coach Rod Petkovic. “It’s that head ball that’s our achilles heel… the loss to El Toro (2009 CIF Final) the loss to El Camino (2009 State Playoffs) and the loss today, all on headers… we have what we have, but we can’t get up in the air like that… This team worked so hard this year, it’s disappointing… we’re young, I hope we learned something today.”

That lesson might be more high pressure early.  In all three of those losses to headers, the headers were the only goals of the game, and they all came in the second half.  The Rams tried to do a little too much one-on-one play in the first half and only got three shots off.  They did a better job in the second half of stringing plays together and earned five shots, but that all came after the Porter goal with the Wolverines packed in.

Millikan finishes the season with 24 wins and 19 shutout victories.

            STATS

 MIL                     HW

   8        Shots      10

   4         SOG        7

  14        Fouls      11

   1       Corners      1

   0       Offsides     2