Best Season Ever Ends too Soon for Rays Boys Soccer

Tears were shed on Winterberry Field Thursday evening.

The Marco Island Academy boys’ soccer team was enjoying their best season ever. They were going places. But their season came to a crushing end on Thursday night, January 28, when they were eliminated from the district tournament. After finishing two overtimes tied at 1-1, the Rays lost 3-0 on penalty kicks, to Seacrest.

Coming off of the best regular season in school history, 11-3, it looked like the Rays would cruise through districts on their way to bigger and better things. Like the regional tournament.

"We had the best record our school has ever posted for a soccer team,” said Saul Sotolongo, first year MIA head coach. "We were confident that we could go the finals of the district championships and advance on to regionals. That’s just the way it is.”

The Rays played Seacrest (7-9-2) on January 3 and won easily.

“We’ve only played them one time,” Sotolongo said. "And we came away with a 7-1 win. I knew coming in that they were going to play us tough. Everybody at this point in the season brings their A game. Having only seen them that one time makes it tough, too. Because you don’t really feel for a team from one game. We knew there was a lot of potential danger out there. They’ve scored a lot of goals all season. Their little struggle was that they hadn’t come together defensively. It’s been a while since we’ve played them, and they’ve figured some things out. They finished the season strong and were able to come away with a win tonight.”

Seacrest Coach David Pearson was understandably pleased by his team’s win.

“We knew we’d taken a loss last time,” Pearson said, "they’d beaten us 7-1. We came out and we worked hard. We played to our strengths. We’re just happy to be moving on to the final.”

After Alberto Trejo-Molina scored the Stingrays’ goal in the first half, Francesco Felice scored MIA’s goal in the second half. Sotolongo thought his team was playing well and would score again.

“We were able to play our game,” Sotolongo said, “we generally build from the back. We try to be very solid defensively then keep a strong possession upfield. Control the ball as much of the game as possible is what we always go for. We mostly achieved that. When you look at possession of the ball in the game, we had it most of the time. Their strength is their center attack. They kind of wait for teams to come up on them and spread themselves out, then they quickly try to counter and get a goal back that way. They got their goal in the first half, we got our goal in the second half. We came back. Our game came together in the second half, we got a goal, we just couldn’t find the second one. We took as many shots as we could, it just didn’t happen. Sometimes you just don’t get that bounce you need to get the goals. We had plenty of opportunities. We just couldn’t find the back of the net. I was keeping a stat sheet, so I think we took over 20 shots. We played well. It just didn’t come together in the form of a second goal to go ahead. One-one at the end of two overtimes. Wow. It was a tough game. It was a good match-up between the two of us."

The Rays weren’t just good in Sotolongo’s rookie season with the team, they were downright dominant. The Rays outscored their opponents 51-14 this season.

“It will take a little while to get past this loss,” Sotolongo said. "But I do look forward to next season. We have a lot of good guys coming back who should put us in a good place. We’re looking to have another good year next year.”

Sotolongo was sad to say goodbye to his seniors.

“I told them I wish I could coach them for several more years,” he said sincerely. "They’re a great bunch. It is a little sad that I only get one year with them, being my first year of coaching them. It would be nice to have them around. They’re a huge reason for why this season went the way it did - their leadership."