Rifle Bears varsity soccer mauled the Spartans 3-0 in Rifle on Tuesday as a new layer of snow slowly engulfed their home field.

“This is revenge two years in the making,” Rifle Bears All-State senior goalkeeper Jefferson Torres said after dominating the team that booted them from the first round of the 2022 playoffs. 

The Rifle Bears varsity soccer team powered through a blizzard in the second round of the 2024 3A state playoffs. Aurora West College Prep Academy made the near four-hour trek to Rifle but forgot the fight on the Front Range.

Bears senior forward and 3A leader in goals and points, Eduardo Espino, netted the first and third through the heavy snowflakes, and his senior forward partner Luis Mendoza found the twine in between during the rout. 

Rifle’s game plan relied on the long through ball to connect, and it hadn’t through the first 37 minutes of the game. The knotted score, mixed with the plummeting temperatures and increased snowfall, created tension within the cold crowd. 

Espino, who had been on the receiving end of the failed through balls to that point, was tired of the tension and the near-misses. As the Bears began breaking the ball out of their zone, Espino found a lane to run, and his senior captain Yahir Marquez laced a beautiful ball past all but one defender. Espino didn’t have trouble beating the last man or the goalkeeper, who he sent diving to his left just to come up short. 

The scoreboard read 1-0 at the half, and as the two teams switched sides, the snowfall became a blizzard. The wind was now blowing into Torres’s face, and with a slim 1-0 lead, Bears head coach Jonathan Espinoza was not comfortable. 

“I just told the boys,” Espinoza said. When we were up 1-0 and the wind started blowing into our faces, that’s when the game got scary. Jeff had the wind in his eyes, so getting the second and third goals helped us get a sense of tranquility during the blizzard.”

The second and third goals came in an eerily similar fashion to Espino’s first. The Bears were living and dying on the long through-ball. It didn’t gain much traction through the first 20 minutes of the second half, letting the Spartans earn a sliver of momentum. However, that was briskly taken away by the combination of Mendoza’s goal and the sudden remembrance of the temperature. 

Once the Bears went up two, most eyes turned to the scoreboard to see how much time Rifle would have to waste clock before the fans could warm up inside. Mendoza’s goal came with 24 minutes left in the second half, and ten minutes later, the third goal fell off of Espino’s boot. The Spartans didn’t do much to try to stop the clock or even the score, but their slide tackles became much more frequent and late, and the fans didn’t do much but let the ref hear it for offsides calls. 

“Honestly, it was our last matchup that really motivated us,” Espino said after the win. “All we had to do was look at how the last game ended.”

The Bears soccer program transformed when Espinoza was hired in 2022. The young and fiery head coach has his players bought into his championship mentality, resulting in three consecutive playoff appearances. The Bears state division ranking before and after Espinoza was hired is glaring. In ’20, they finished 65th in 3A; in ’21, the ranking didn’t look much better at 49. But in ’22, the first year under Espinoza, the ranking rocketed to 15, and the Bears saw their first playoff game in three years, unfortunately falling to these very same Spartans. In ’23, their ranking saw another impressive jump, this time snuggling comfily into the number two spot. This year, slight speed bumps didn’t let them retain their place, but they still solidly lay claim as a top-three team in the state. 

“This one is personal for us,” Espinoza said. “They beat us in the first round two years ago and were taunting our fans and players. This game was personal, and we responded by winning.”

Rifle’s home playoff advantage doesn’t stop in the second round. Although Roaring Fork won the 3A Western Slope league, the Bears are still the higher seed and will host the Rams in an I-70 showdown on Saturday, Nov. 9.