HERMISTON – In a season opening rivalry soccer match, the Hermiston Bulldogs sunk the Pendleton Buckaroos 2-1 at Sandstone Middle School Tuesday.

Hermiston, under the direction of first-year coach Rich Harshberger, hit the grass running and put an assault on Pendleton’s goal in the first half.

After several narrow misses, the Bulldogs finally broke onto the scoreboard with a long goal from Frankie Garcia.

“I was by myself…so I took the shot,” Garcia said about scoring the first goal of Hermiston’s season. “I felt really confident that we were going to win from there.”

The Bulldogs stayed on the offensive through the first half, putting pressure on the Bucks defense and spreading the field out as much as they could.

Pendleton made several attempts at the goal but showed too much hesitation about taking shots, according to coach Scott DeSomber.

“We had a lot of opportunities, the ball was on their side – all the ingredients were there,” DeSomber said. “We need to work on taking our advantage of opportunities when they’re there, having fewer touches and being more aggressive.”

Hermiston jumped on chances much more willingly, and fired in a second goal before halftime with an Ivan Navarrete assist to Ezequiel Hernandez right in front of the goal.

The early scoring was important to the Bulldogs, who were missing several players due to team consequences for missing practice. Several starters found it difficult to go the distance in the game.

“We kind of had a short bench tonight, but I would have liked to have seen a little more from our starters,” Harshberger said. “Unfortunately we’re down to two hour practices, so conditioning’s on their time. It’s more important to work on on-field skill sets than conditioning.”

In the second half the Bucks used depth to their advantage and turned the pressure back on the Bulldogs. They turned up the shots and spent almost the entire 30 minutes on Hermiston’s side of the field, but couldn’t hit the back of the net until it was too late. Senior captain Jose Panduro made the team’s first goal of the year on a shot straight up the middle, but time expired before his squad could duplicate the effort and tie the game.

Though both teams are in the Intermountain Conference, the game was nonconference. The next time the two square off will be on Oct. 23 to finish the regular season, and will count toward the league record.

Between meetings, both squads have plenty to work on.

“We’ve got to work on (maintaining our intensity),” Garcia said of Hermiston’s developmental areas. “In the second half we started to slack of a little.”

The Bucks, who last year beat Hermiston early in the season but lost in the league finale, felt Tuesday’s game was a nice first step for the season.

“The second half we were on their side the whole time,” DeSomber said. “It just never happened for us. We didn’t have lady luck on our side.”

Pendleton will travel to Umatilla for their next match Thursday, while Hermiston hosts Riverside Friday.