SARATOGA -- West Valley women's soccer dropped a heartbreaker to the No. 19 Hartnell Panthers on Tuesday, falling 3-2 on their home turf.

The Vikings (4-9-1, 1-4 Coast) came off their strongest victory of the year, winning 9-1 on the road against Gavilan, and continued with early momentum against the Panthers (6-3-1, 3-0 Coast) who had come off a 4-0 win against No. 16 Evergreen Valley.

It's something the Vikings have shown they can do -- attack early. In the sixth minute, midfielder Nya Lemery flicked a ball out towards the middle of the pitch for Daniela Morales Sanchez who tossed an impeccable through ball to Ximena Heredia who sunk her sixth goal in two matches.

Yes, Heredia had five against Gavilan.

"A lot of hard work in training with switching the play, switching the attack," said head coach Fred Espinoza, pleased with his offensive performance. "Switching Ximena up top has made us have more chances and levels."

Even after Hartnell equalized near the end of the first half, the good vibes continued for the Vikings. Off a deep set piece just in front of the midpitch stripe, a Panther defender headed the ball to the left foot of forward Evelyn Santos, who lasered a ball into the top right corner of the posts.

Santos has now scored in three straight matches.

Overall, the Vikings did a solid job to contain an elite Hartnell offense. The Panthers entered Tuesday's match with 11 different players having scored at least one goal, six of which had canned multiple.

Espinoza made a change a little over halfway through the first half. Lizbeth Palafox, who had held down the rightback position and played spectacular against Cabrillo, was subbed out to bring in Maria Cabrera on the attack. This move slid Evelyn Santos back, from playing up front on the left side to in the back on the right side.

Santos was stellar, matching up against one of the top forwards in the conference with sophomore Jacky Vasquez. It seemed like whenever Vasquez would have one of her patented step-overs, Santos matched her every move and forced her to shadow the outside of the box instead of getting closer to scoring position.

"Sometimes the matchups don't line up," said Espinoza. "Evelyn has a high soccer-IQ. Being a forward, she knows the tendencies of other forwards, and what they're going to do. That really helps make great defenders. When you've been a forward, you know what they're thinking already, so you can react to what they're doing."

Between the posts, Soleana Chavez had arguably her best performance of the season. For a player who had 14 saves against the No. 2 team in the nation, that might seem like an exaggeration, but Chavez was spectacular. Hartnell had four corner kicks in the first half, each of which Chavez read well. She flew threw mid-air and multiple bodies from both sides to snatch a few in-swinging kicks and pushed away a handful more.

"Sol -- probably her best performance of the season," said Rodriguez. "Maybe the goals-against doesn't show it, but the vocality that she had, taking control of the defense, actually taking control of the team really made us successful against Hartnell."

Five of the Vikings' last seven matches have been against teams in the top-20 in the state of California. But the treacherous part of their season, at least on paper, is over. A quick road trip against No. 16 Evergreen Valley is sandwiched by a home match against De Anza and five other unranked teams. 

The Vikings also have two things working in their favor -- health and the emergence of Nya Lemery.  

"Now that we're getting healthy, I'm happier with the performance we had today," said Rodriguez. "A lot of players stepped up and I like the direction we're going to have a successful second half of the season. [Nya] brings that energy to the team that we were lacking a bit at the beginning of the season. This is her fourth or fifth game with us, and it's starting to show with the rest of the team with them being physical, with them being physical, them getting stuck on the ball -- Nya has made us turn the corner to be a better team."

With a ten-day matchless stretch ahead, the Vikings have an opportunity to get even healthier and more rested before taking on De Anza on October 24th.