El Paso Locomotive Cruise To Historic First USL Win

El Paso Locomotive FC obtained their first ever win in franchise history on Saturday night against Orange County SC, defeating the club from Irvine, California by the score of 2-0 at Southwest University Park. Both goals for El Paso came off of the left foot of Edson Partida who came on as a substitute in the 41st minute of the match when forward Derek Gebhard would come off with a hamstring injury.

The victory by the Locomotive was well deserved and the only justified result after dominating all aspects of the match for 90 minutes. Orange County SC was only able to create 2 real scoring opportunities during the course of the match, other than that it was a match that was primed for the Locomotive to acquire their first ever victory.

The first goal for the Locos came in the 64th minute of the match when Partida ran into a rebound off the Orange County SC goalkeeper save when Omar Salgado took a shot on goal. Partida fired his shot into the back of the net from inside Orange County goalbox. Partida’s second goal would come in the 88th minute when Sebastian Contreras would find Partida on a run down the left flank, Edson would find himself one on one with the opposing goalkeeper and get his shot past him.

After the match Mark Lowry remained with his feet planted firmly on the ground commenting that he felt his team didn’t play “that well”. Lowry stated, “We got too anxious when we were attacking, we went forward too quickly in the first half when we could have possessed it and played a few more passes at times…I was disappointed a little bit with our possession in the first half even though we had some good chances”.

Lowry did speak volumes about the Locomotive defensive effort, “Defensively we were brilliant. I think they had one chance. Defensively we were superb, all eleven players from the front, the work Derek and Sebastian did to press, the organization in the midfield and the back line marked well.”

El Paso will have a bye week before returning to action on Saturday, April 13 against Phoenix Rising FC, a match that will be played at Southwest University Park.