The game that would be king, Part II

Debated for two days leading up to the game, the site was finally chosen. With the better record, Winter Park was the host, but their stadium was undergoing renovations and couldn’t be used. Several places volunteered their facilities, but none were in Winter Park, and they wanted to use the home field to their advantage. It was arrived upon that Rollins College in Winter Park would be the location of the game. Cahall-Sandspur field is a cozy and well maintained facility on campus. The problem with this field being used was obvious at the outset: nowhere near enough seating. They had a covered fan section with 500 very comfortable seats, but as I said earlier, Lyman alone was nearing that amount of fans at each of their last two games. I arrived early, fearful that my wife, son, and I wouldn’t get a seat. As we entered and paid for our tickets, I volunteered to the Winter Park folks taking our money that they had made a miscalculation, and they were going to have more people than they could accommodate in this tiny facility. They brushed off my words and told me they would just refuse entrance after a certain point.

Yeah, ok. Good luck with that.

About 20 minutes prior to game time, every seat in the stadium was already full, and the people entering were starting to fill any available space they could stand. Aisle’s, up in the back of the stands, on stairs, wherever. The building was awash with excited soccer fans, and more were on the way. Ten minutes prior to the start, I went down to use the rest room. I passed by the ticket takers and looked at one of them and shrugged my shoulders, as if to say, “I told you”. The woman selling tickets nodded her head and rolled her eyes in agreement. As I walked to the rest room, I could see the line of people wanting to get in, snaking its way down Aloma Avenue, so long it was out of my line of sight. There was soon to be a large number of people in a very small area.

The teams marched out to the center of the field, and the public announcer read off the starting line-ups and coaches for both squads. It was at this juncture that I noticed the canopy over head and the aluminum flooring beneath our feet was providing outstanding acoustics, and it didn’t take much imagination to realize this was probably going to be a fairly loud soccer games. I couldn’t have been more wrong. This ended up being the loudest and most electric high school soccer games anyone has ever been a part of. The intense energy was flowing through those stands, and there probably isn’t a strong enough adjective to describe it.

One of the moments I’ll always remember happened one minute and forty-seven seconds prior to kick-off. Everyone rose for the playing of the National Anthem, and then a strange thing occurred. Slowly from the Winter Park side of the stands, people could be heard softly and respectfully singing along with the music. Everyone in there, white, black, Hispanic, parent, student, school administrator, or stadium official, picked up on the singing and joined in. We were all caught up in the emotion and expectation of the evening, and regardless of which side anyone was supporting, for slightly less than two minutes we bonded together as Americans and citizens of the same nation. It was a very moving moment to be a part of, and unfortunately happens far too infrequently any more.

The field is surrounded on three sides by a wrought iron fence about seven or eight feet high. They had indeed shut off ticket sales, though far beyond the number they had initially planned upon. I can only imagine they didn’t want to face a confrontation with a parent who couldn’t get off work in time to arrive early, and in doing so they made the correct call. The sidewalks near the fence started to fill with people who simply watched the game for free from the street. With the exception of being higher up in the stands, those forced to stay out had a perfectly good view of the game. There were around a hundred lining the fence as the game began, a number that would just about triple as the night wore on. Game organizers had indeed miscalculated, and the lost revenue was represented by the growing multitudes on the outside of the fence.

After feeling each other out in the beginning, about eight minutes into the game “David” struck first. On a corner kick, the ball was maddeningly bouncing around in front of the goal, Lyman in their sky blue and yellow and Winter Park in all white, each frantically trying to do something in a sea of legs. In what seemed like an eternity, but were actually fractions of seconds, sophomore defenseman Josh Bonnel finally flicked the ball into the back of the net, setting off what was at the time the largest explosion of noise I’d ever personally heard in soccer. The place erupted larger than Mount St. Helens, and the game was on. Everyone knew then, this was not going to be a normal night.

Four minutes later, the initial noise produced after goal number one became a distant memory. Lyman junior midfielder Chris McKeever sent a high ball from about 25 yards out on the left over the outstretched arms of the Winter park goalkeeper, and when the fans saw the vinyl netting give way to the ball hitting it, somewhere in Florida a Richter scale surely must have gone off. I had mistakenly thought the first goal produced the loudest noise in soccer history, but it was nothing in comparison to goal number 2. The Lyman fans, who we later realized out-manned the Winter Park fans somewhere near 5 to 1, were delirious. It was screamingly loud, a term I use to describe the fact that even if you screamed at the top of your lungs to the person sitting 12 inches from you, they wouldn’t have the foggiest idea what you just said.

As the first half wound down, Winter Park had an incredible scoring opportunity whisk right by them. On a breakaway, the left wing striker for Winter Park took a low hard shot that Lyman’s senior goalkeeper Marcos Lado had to dive just to get his body in front of. The ball deflected off of his legs and ended up on the foot of another Winter Park forward less than 10 yards out. With Lyman’s keeper on the ground and the goal mouth wide open, the young high schooler shot the ball high of the cross-bar, bringing about another huge roar from the Lyman faithful. As half time arrived, the crowds outside the fence had doubled, and the tension in the stands was palpable. Would the giant fall tonight? Did Lyman have this in the bag?

Not hardly. Champions don’t fall without a fight, and this game was far from over. The Winter Park boys were champions, and had every intention of proving it in the last forty minutes.