Students cheered as they watched the EOPS, Counseling services and Transfer and Career services combine as one team to take the win against the Athletic Department in LMC’s first ever Futsal tournament with a final score of 4-3. The soccer game was hosted by Student Life and the F.I.R.M.E. Club on Wednesday March 27 in the Pittsburg campus gymnasium.

Student Armon Gonzalez enjoyed playing for Honors because of their team dynamic.

“I’m really liking our synergy, I think we’re playing off each other really well,” Gonzalez said. “I think we’re reading and predicting each other and just communicating without communicating.”

Towards the end, the game began to get tense when players had disagreements with student Jose Maldonado who organized the event and was also one of the referees. 

“There was one conflict about who qualified in the final round in group stage two between the Athletic Department and Puente,” Maldonado said.

Puente was disqualified after one of their players received a red card, leaving the team short one player of the minimum requirement of four.

Student Giampier Espejo Alarcon who played for the Puente team felt that the tournament should have been more organized in terms of its rules.

“El torneo estuvo muy bueno, pero siento que debería organizarse mejor porque muchos jugadores no tenían conocimiento de dónde salía la pelota y dónde no,” he said. (The tournament was very good, but I feel that the organization should have been better because lots of players didn’t know where the ball was coming from and where it was not.)

F.I.R.M.E. President Leeroy Rios said the intensity showed that players were very into the game, but for the most part he thought it was just a game.

Despite Espejo Alarcon’s disagreements, he gave credit to Maldonado for organizing an event that gave students the opportunity to unite and get active.

Rios explained that while the F.I.R.M.E. Club helped advise, Maldonado led most of the event’s coordination.

“He came to us for advice and we helped him with it, but he did the outline, he did all the research, and he organized this,” Rios said.

Maldonado said he hoped it would “connect communities and departments so students can get to know the coordinators, the directors, and know that they can feel confident to go and ask for help.” He added that the goal was for everyone to have fun instead of focusing on winning.