Ripon Christian is heading to the Sac-Joaquin Section Division VII championship game for a second straight year after upending fourth-seeded Vacaville Christian 4-1 on Wednesday.
And the Knights (18-6-1), says coach Kevin Tameling, may still be getting better. Cynthia Van Vliet continued her recent surge of goal scoring, adding two more in Wednesday’s victory. She is one of several key members who joined the squad late because of the girls basketball team’s run to the CIF Northern California Regional Championships.
Van Vliet has scored twice in three of Ripon Christian’s last four matches and has nine goals on the season. She’s been a nice complement to attacking whiz Buitrago, who tallied her 42nd goal of the season in Wednesday’s semifinal.
“The girl is very athletic, extremely fast,” Tameling said. “She was one of the girls who were on the basketball team so they’ve only been playing soccer for about a month or month and a half. The basketball girls are just now in midseason form.”
Scary.
The defending champions will square off with No. 3 Forest Lake Christian (14-5) of Auburn, which shut out No. 2 Western Sierra, 2-0. The section finale is scheduled for a 10 o’clock start Saturday morning at Lincoln High of Stockton.
It was the Van Vliet-Buitrago connection that got the Knights rolling Wednesday. In the sixth minute, Buitrago had a 1-on-1 opportunity deflected away by the Vacaville Christian keeper, but Van Vliet was at the right place at the right time to put it away.
Ripon Christian doubled the lead on Sam Carvalho’s excellent individual play. She won the ball near midfield and dribbled through the defense before blowing it past the Falcons’ keeper.
Vacaville Christian (10-4) did not go away quietly. Near the midway point in the second half, Miranda Foley scored to make it 2-1. Moments later, Van Vliet countered with her second goal off an assist from Emily Manes before Buitrago capped the final score with 3 minutes remaining.
“That was a pretty big change of momentum,” Tameling said of Van Vliet’s timely answer. “From that point we took control of the rest of the game. Vacaville had some really good players and it was pretty tight there for a while until we pulled away in the end.”
RC set to defend D7 crown

