The El Paso Locomotive FC played to a 1-1 draw against Hartford Athletic Saturday night at Southwest University Park.
In the first half the Locos dominated play and got a couple of shots on goal but they failed to scored so the game was scoreless at halftime.
In the second half, El Paso got on the scoreboard in the 56th minute when sixteen year old Diego Abarca from the Locomotive Academy scored a goal on a left footed shot. With that goal, Abarca scored his first goal of his professional career and also became the youngest player in Locomotive history to score a goal.
The Locos lead wouldn’t last long as in the 68th minute Hartford’s Peter Lee would score a goal on a right footed shot.
After the game was tied, both defenses buckled down and didn’t allow any more goals for the night ending the match in a 1-1 draw.
Here’s what Locomotive FC Head Coach and Technical Director John Hutchinson had to say about the match:
“We have a lot of players tonight. I’m not going to hide that fact but we still put a team out that I thought would win this game. The silver lining is the football they played and the way they went about it. The way they didn’t stop for 90 minutes and fought to win a game. I thought from the first minute to the end they were playing for the win.”
With the draw El Paso gets one point and are now 6-6-3 with 21 points. They will hit the road to take on Phoenix Rising FC at Wild Horse Pass in Arizona on Saturday. Kickoff is at 8:30 pm.