Doral Academy boys fall short in bid for state title
Some nights, it’s just not there.
Favored to win a third state title in four years, the Doral Academy boys’ soccer team, the No. 1-ranked team in Class 7A and No. 1 seed among the four semifinal entries, traveled to DeLand expecting to come back with another big trophy. What they got instead was an early bus ride home.
The Firebirds turned in a performance that perhaps matched the miserable windy, cold and rainy weather conditions as they fell to No. 4 seed Winter Garden West Orange 3-1 in a 7A state semifinal on Thursday night at Spec Martin Stadium.
West Orange (14-4-2) advances to the state title game for the third time in program history and will be looking to win it for the first time against Boca Raton in the final on Saturday night.
“Getting to this point has been tough but I’m super proud of the boys,” said Doral coach Pam McDonald. “They fought, gave their everything, but tonight we just fell a little bit short. We definitely didn’t create enough chances offensively and our forwards were just a little off tonight. When you get to this stage, everybody needs to be clicking together and we just were not. It didn’t quite happen tonight.”
Doral (15-3-2) struggled offensively from the opening whistle to create any kind of quality chances at the net. By the time the game had reached its 55th minute, the Firebirds had recorded just one official shot on goal.
In the meantime, West Orange took the lead just four minutes before halftime when the Warriors were awarded a free kick following a foul from 35 yards out. Finlay Prain, who would prove to be a thorn in Doral’s side all night long, dropped a perfect ball in front of the net that
Jacob Bignon one-touched past Doral diving goalkeeper Santiago Gallotti into the bottom right corner of the net.
Had it not been for Gallotti’s heroics, the score might’ve been much worse, as he made three monster saves. Two came in the first half and one early in the second.
Then came the game’s 56th minute when, out of nowhere, Doral finally put an offensive rally together. Mao Diaz got to a ball down low and lofted a perfect arcing shot just over the outstretched hands of West Orange keeper Brandon Cordero that forward and team captain Yitzhak Calatrava was there to head in. Suddenly it was 1-1 and the Firebirds had life.
But the momentum didn’t last long. Just six minutes later, at the 17:52 mark, there was Prain again, dribbling and clearing some space out on top and finding a tight window to let go a rocket shot from 20 yards out. Gallotti dove to his right and actually got his hands on it but, perhaps due to a wet ball, it slipped from his grasp and into the net to make it 2-1.
Not even the desperation of being down by a goal could help the cause for Doral offensively as the Firebirds simply could not give themselves quality looks at the net over the next 10 minutes. The Warriors put them out of their misery with 7:53 left when Rafael Tomirotte got loose down in front of the net and, from a severe angle, knocked another one past Gallotti.
“I’m just sad right now,” Calatrava said. “Just a really unlucky game and we couldn’t do much. I thought our defense played really well, we just weren’t able to get out of the back and do much offensively. We just didn’t have enough hunger to play tonight. We weren’t on.”
As skilled as her Doral players are with the ball, McDonald did not use the bad weather as an excuse.
“No, I’m not going to blame it on that,” McDonald said. “It’s the same for both teams and sometimes it can actually work to your advantage. I just feel like we didn’t get enough shots on target to even test their goalkeeper so that was ultimately our downfall, not the conditions.”