Just like the parent club, Tacoma Defiance won 4-1 on Saturday night. After a dreary first half that needed seven saves from Christian Herrera, Sam Adeniran decided to take over everything.
His first goal was mere seconds after the second half started. Pouncing on a throw from the Orange County SC keeper, Adeniran intercepted that pass dribbled once and slammed the ball from 19 yards out, punishing the goal net for existing.
Six minutes later Sam finished strong ball movement from Cody Baker and Danny Robles to score his second. Baker put an OCSC player on the grass with a strong shimmy and then kept carrying forward into a central space. Robles picked up Cody’s loose pass and broke through the Orange County line sending Adeniran one-on-one with the keeper. It was Sam’s weakest shot of the season, and technically perfect.
Frankly, the hattrick goal was just plain rude.
Tacoma were already going to win. They were up 3-1 because Alec Diaz scored off a double-parry-save in the 90th minute.
Tacoma Defiance weren’t done scoring. When an Orange County player committed a handball at 92:44 OCSC were frustrated and tried to argue.
Obed Vargas slammed the ball to a stop, restarted play by sending Adeniran towards goal again. The only Orange County player that was aware that Obed was playing soccer was the goalkeeper that Adeniran had already beaten twice on the day.
“Firstly, I just want to thank God for even giving me the ability to be able to be on this field and, I don’t know, it just came from seven games losing,” Adeniran sad about his hattrick postgame. “Losing seven games. That really put fire in all of us. And we love the fans, and we love this club and we just wanted to come out and wanted to work hard and so I think it’s just getting tired of losing.”
Moving Sam Adeniran to the left wing and playing Alec Diaz as the center forward worked perfectly, and pushed Tacoma to 6th just two points out of 4th.
The hat trick was the first from the Sounders’ USL affiliate since Darwin Jones scored one in S2’s second-ever match on March 29, 2015. Adeniran now has 10 goals on the season, the fourth most in Defiance/S2 history and two behind Justin Dhillon’s club record.