Alex Tuyo scored on two sensational goals to lead Harmony to an impressive 4-0 win over St. Cloud and advance the Longhorns (12-5-2) to Wednesday’s Class 6A, District 7 title game.
Harmony hosts Davenport Community Ridge (9-3-0), who blew out Poinciana in the night’s other semifinal, 7-0.
The Longhorns won’t be the only ones playing for a trophy next week, with Celebration’s boys and Harmony’s girls going for a championship.
Coach Brett Ballard’s team’s solid effort allows the Longhorns to play for their first district title in … “a long, long time,” he said.
“We felt we had the edge coming in to tonight and knew we had a good chance to limit St. Cloud’s scoring opportunities. The question was would we take advantage of our chances and we did. I thought it was a good solid overall effort.”
Although not guaranteed, the win and their current record most likely will be good enough to advance Harmony to the regional round with an at-large bid should they fall to Ridge, but Ballard says his team will be focused on not having to worry about that scenario.
“We had some struggles and we played some great opponents this year, but our goals this year were to win the OBC title and win a district championship. We fell short to Celebration in OBCs, but we are now at the doorstep of accomplishing one of our major goals.”
If there was any doubt that Harmony would get past their rivals in the semifinals, Tuyo put that notion to rest early. After creating several scoring chances for himself early -- where he fired just wide of the net -- Tuyo made it 1-0 at the 24-minute mark when he out-ran St. Cloud’s Jacob Snow to a long pass, flicked it past the goalie and buried it into the wide-open net.
Ten minutes later, Tuyo just missed on a shot that bounced off the top of the crossbar, but teammate Jaun Rua gathered the ball at his feet and slammed it home for a 2-0 advantage. Tuyo would then do a nifty spin past a defender and hit a one-timer from distance beating Snow with his left foot at the 10-minute mark to put the game away at 3-0. Alejandro Vega capped the scoring four minutes later, taking a long cross from Rua and heading it home.
“Alex expands the game for us from sideline to sideline, box to box,” Ballard said of his junior standout. “When he goes into a challenge he always seems to come out with the ball and if you give him a second to shoot, he’s going to put it on frame.”
Deserving equal praise for the win was the play of Harmony’s midfield and defensemen. They allowed only three shots of goal, none of which had a serious chance of getting past goalie Kevin Lavigne.
“Our defense is really strong and we knew we should be able to limit their shots. Our plan was to press them and keep them off the ball and make sure they didn’t allow them to get close to our goal,” Ballard added.
The Harmony boys are not the only Osceola team that will now compete for a district championship – they’re not even the only Harmony team.
Seeded second in Class 6A, District 7, the Lady Longhorns (9-5-1) will also play for a championship when they face top-seeded Ridge Community (16-1-3) at 6 p.m. Tuesday at St. Cloud.
Harmony advanced to the championships with a thrilling 3-3 tie with St. Cloud, winning the contest on penalty kicks.
Tied 1-1 at the half and 2-2 after regulation, the Longhorns took a 3-2 lead with a goal in first overtime. But the Bulldogs got the equalizer in the second overtime, which put the game in a shoot-out that Harmony won, 2-0.
“It was probably the wildest game I have ever been associated with in all my years of soccer. It had a little bit of everything including some good offense, some bad offense, some good defense and definitely some bad defense,” Harmony coach Scott Marlega said. “The game was crazy on so many levels; we out-possessed and out-shot them all night but missed two penalty kicks and just could not put them away.”
With the score tied in the first overtime, junior captain Rebekah Wiles scored to put Harmony up. But with time evaporating in the second extra period, St. Cloud pushed numbers forward and when Harmony failed to clear a deep throw-in. Sophomore Avery Thomas was able to sneak a dribbler past the Longhorn goalie to tie the game.
Both teams missed on their first two attempts in the shootout round, but Daniela Canizales and Byrnn Magner converted in the third and fourth rounds and Harmony goalie Olivia Godfrey came up with two big saves in the shootout to secure the win.
Despite a solid record, Marlega believes the Longhorns must win the district title to advance to regionals.
“Right now we are ranked 10th in the region and you never know, but it would be tough to jump into the top eight without a win over Ridge,” he said. “They are a very talented, explosive and offensive minded team. We will need to change our approach and look to score off counters.”
On Thursday, Celebration (10-0-4), overcame a two-goal halftime deficit to defeat Windermere by a 3-2 score in a Class 7A, District 5 semifinal. The Storm will now take on Olympia at 8 p.m. Tuesday for the title. Olympia (11-6-3 and the fourth seed in the district tournament) stunned top-seeded Dr. Phillips (12-4-1) 2-1 in the other semifinal. The Storm met Olympia earlier in the season with the teams battling to a 1-1 tie in November.
“It was one of the finest moments of my coaching career,” Storm coach Chad Boudreaux posted on his Facebook page Friday. “I’m so proud of the young men in our program, they battled and never gave up and ended up victorious. Going down 2-0 is never easy, especially when half your team is dealing with injuries.”
Elsewhere, the Gateway boys (6-4-3) stayed alive in Class 5A, District 7 action with a 2-1 win over Lake Wales in a quarterfinal game. The victory puts the Panthers in a tough Monday semifinal against top-seeded New Smyrna Beach (12-3-3), a game Gateway most likely would have to win to keep any slim regional hopes alive.
The Panthers girls’ team (8-3-2) most likely saw their season come to an end with a 4-0 loss to Auburndale in the district quarterfinals.
District champions automatically advance to regional play, as do the four highest ranked non-district winners.
