Bishop Moore drought continues with 2nd consecutive 4A final loss
For the second year in a row, the Bishop Moore boys soccer team, just 24 hours after watching their girls win a state championship, had an opportunity to do the same.
But for the second year in a row, the Hornets, who were looking to end a 23-year championship drought, came up painfully short again.
After losing to one Miami-Dade County team a year ago in Ransom Everglades, another Dade team, Gulliver Prep, proved to be Bishop Moore’s undoing on Thursday night as the Hornets dropped a 3-2 decision to the Raiders in the Class 4A final at DeLand’s Spec Martin Stadium.
All night long, every time Bishop Moore (23-3-1) tried to penetrate the Gulliver defense, the Hornets were turned away, unable to mount any kind of effective offensive attack, frustrated by a stifling defense.
Meanwhile the Raiders (16-4-2), ranked No. 15 nationally by Max Preps, got the only goal they would need 16 minutes before halftime when Cosme Salas knocked a shot past Hornets goalkeeper Matthew McCall.
Only trailing 1-0 at the break, the Hornets were still in it. When Gulliver’s Franco Garcia-Morillo redirected a perfect through ball down low past a diving McCall into the bottom right corner of the net four minutes into the second half, however, they were in trouble.
Tomas Sciarra scored the Raiders’ third goal as the second-half water break arrived and it was 3-0 as shoulders slumped on Bishop Moore’s sideline.
To the the Hornets’ credit, they did not quit.
When Alexander Pencak scored with 9:29 to go, they knew they weren’t going to get shut out. And they kept battling. Even with just 30 seconds left, Spencer Moler managed to get his foot on a ball 20 yards out in the middle and kick it into the top right corner of the net.
But killing 30 the final seconds in soccer is pretty easy and Gulliver did that without an issue.
“You can’t fall behind by three goals against a team like Gulliver and expect to win,” said Bishop Moore coach Tom Hage. “That said, I was really proud of our kids for not just throwing in the towel and laying down once we got down by three. They kept on battling all the way down to the final seconds. Fought to the end and that says a lot about their character.”
As far as reaching the soccer summit two years in a row with a chance to end a long championship drought, only to be turned away again?
“It’s frustrating for sure,” said Hage. “Two one-goal losses back-to-back years, but only one team was going to win tonight and unfortunately it wasn’t us. Now we’ll have to go back to the grind and pick up the pieces like we did last year. Our kids showed that they have enough heart to get all the way back here so hopefully, one of these days, we’ll finally break through.”
Bishop Moore won three boys soccer state championships in a span of four years (1979, 1980, 1982) shortly after the FHSAA first sanctioned the sport and won the 2A championship in 2000.