Westminster Christian’s title hopes fade in an avalanche of goals

Westminster Christian senior midfielder Matias Gutierrez laid on the ground for a couple of seconds after colliding with Tampa Catholic goalie Eric Fidalgo on Thursday night.

Gutierrez watched the ball roll into the back of the net for the first goal in

Westminster Christian history in a state title game.

Unfortunately for Gutierrez and the Warriors, their joy wouldn’t last 10 seconds.

It took less than that for Tampa Catholic to tie the game and only a few more minutes to effectively put the game away with three more tallies, dealing the Warriors a 4-2 loss in the Class 3A state final at Spec Martin Stadium.

Tampa Catholic (25-2) won its first state championship after going 0-3 in prior state finals.

“I thought that was definitely the turning point,” said eighth-year Westminster Christian coach Josh Kirk, who guided the Warriors past the regionals for the first time since 2012. “We had a little lapse in concentration and that swung the game. Over the next 10 minutes the momentum shifted and we never got it back until it was too late.”

Senior Marcello Valbuena scored the first of his two goals seconds after Gutierrez’s goal when he kicked home a rebound off Westminster keeper Johnny Gleason. Eight minutes later, Valbuena struck again on a header off a corner by Sean Siwek to give Tampa Catholic the lead for good.

Siwek later fired a free kick that Jack O’Leary followed up for a third goal just before halftime. The onslaught continued in the second half as Valbuena rushed into the box and drew a foul on Sean Maresma with 30:44 left. Jacob Spengler converted the penalty kick to make it 4-1.

Westminster Christian (11-4-2), which was playing in its first state championship match and graduates seven seniors, added a goal with 6:20 left when

Jack Butler scored his team-high 12th goal. The Warriors couldn’t capitalize further despite having a man advantage for the final 11-plus minutes after Valbuena received a second yellow card.

“You could see the character of this team,” Kirk said. “They fought until the final seconds and hopefully we can get back. But this one hurts.”

A Senate committee on Wednesday approved a bill that would penalize companies that perform poorly on state contracts, a reaction to the contracting scandals that have erupted in the state government in recent years.

Senate Bill 788, sponsored by Sen. Janet Cruz, D-Tampa, would bar companies from bidding on new state contracts if they fail to meet the terms of their previous contracts with the state.

“I’m not picking on any company in particular,” Cruz said, noting that it could apply to multiple companies.

But she did single out the decision last year by Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration to choose Deloitte Consulting for a new $135 million contract to handle the state’s Medicaid data.

The decision generated headlines and outrage — even from DeSantis himself — because the unemployment website that Deloitte created for the state in 2013 failed immediately at the start of the pandemic last year. The Herald/Times found that the Agency for Health Care Administration, which awarded the Medicaid data contract, didn’t delve into Deloitte’s work on the online unemployment system, known as CONNECT, before giving out the award.

Deloitte was paid about $40 million for its work on CONNECT, even though the system has been faulty since its launch in 2013.

“With all of this in consideration, how can we allow any company, in this case it was Deloitte, to receive another $135 million contract?” Cruz said

Wednesday.

Under her bill, state agencies would be required to report companies that don’t fulfill the terms and conditions of their contracts to the Department of Management Services, which would then decide whether to place those companies on the state’s suspended-vendor list. Currently, that list applies to companies that have ongoing contracts with the state, not companies whose past work proves faulty. Deloitte’s contract to build CONNECT ended in 2015.

Once on the list, companies would have to wait a year before they could ask the Department of Management Services or an administrative-law judge to be removed.

The bill was approved unanimously Wednesday without any lawmakers asking questions or debating the proposal. It would still have to pass multiple committees and be approved by the House and Senate before making it to the governor’s desk for approval.

The state has seen several state contracts turn sour in recent years, affecting millions of Floridians. In 2018, the state’s overhaul of the SunPass tolling system was a fiasco. Drivers across the state were double-billed, a glitch that ended up costing the state millions of dollars. The state had contracted with Conduent State & Local Solutions for the work.

In each failure, however, much of the problem could be blamed on the state’s mismanagement. In the SunPass situation, a state auditor found the state wasn’t managing the contract at all, choosing instead to pay another contractor to monitor Conduent’s performance.