South Broward boys eye first state title with semifinal victory
DELAND
Four years after coming close to a state championship, coach Lionel Brown and the Hollywood South Broward boys’ soccer team will get another chance.
The Bulldogs, on the strength of a solid offensive performance, hung on to defeat Valrico Bloomingdale 3-2 late Wednesday afternoon in a Class 6A state semifinal contest at Spec Martin Stadium.
There are no players left from that 2020 team, but Brown was on the sideline that day when he watched his team lose a late lead in regulation and then drop a heartbreaker to Niceville in overtime.
The Bulldogs, who improved to 19-1-3, boarded their buses to head back on I-95 and will return on Saturday to play defending 6A champion Viera at 1 p.m. for another shot at the program’s first state title. South Broward almost got a rematch with Niceville but Viera knocked them off 2-1 in the opposite semifinal.
“I’ve been telling my players all season that I’m the only one still around who knows what it feels like to make it all the way to the state title game only to come up short and what it takes to get there,” Brown said. “It’s a hard thing to do, so it’s pretty exciting that we’ve gotten back there and now would like to finish off on Saturday what we didn’t do four years ago.”
South Broward appeared to have everything in cruise control, enjoying a 3-1 lead with less than seven minutes to go when Bloomingdale turned on the afterburners.
First came a perfectly executed direct kick from 40 yards out that Giovanni Morales dropped in front of the net and Kyle Plante headed it over South Broward keeper Ivan Fernandez’s head to slice the lead to one with 6:35 left.
The Bulls (20-2-1) then pushed everybody up for the remainder of the game to try and get the equalizer, and came close a few times. The closest was on a corner kick with 30 seconds left when Bloomingdale keeper Zane Hydock emptied his net and got a clean head on the ball, which sailed just barely to the right of the net.
After the first 23 minutes went scoreless, South Broward got a lead it would never lose in the 24th minute when, off a corner kick from Lucas Costa, the ball bounced around in front of the net where Dominik Tianich managed to get a foot on it and knock it in. Just seven minutes later, Costa was in on another goal when he dropped a nice pass down the right side that William Perdomo got a handle on and beat Bloomingdale defenders around the right-hand side, turned the corner and knocked it past Hydock to make it 2-0.
It was also a moment of sweet revenge for Perdomo, who had been getting chided by a vociferous Bloomingdale crowd in the stands with chants of “flopper” and a few other colorful unmentionables. Perdomo ran straight over to the Bulls crowd after the goal to put his index finger up to his mouth to “shush” the crowd. He got a yellow card for it but later said it was all worth it.
“Yeah, I heard them — it was hard not to and hard not to take it personally,” said Perdomo with a sheepish grin. “I’m not sure why they were picking on me but when I scored, I wanted to make sure they knew who scored and what the score was. I was just glad I got to play today because I had an injured ankle and wasn’t sure if I was going to be good enough to get on the field. Now I can’t wait for Saturday.”