Martinez powers Palmetto to win

PALMETTO — Palmetto High sweeper Jose Martinez knows how to make good use of his free time.

With his Tigers embroiled in a scoreless deadlock against Braden River and only 13 minutes left in their Class 4A-District 10 semifinal match, the senior took matters into his own hands.

“The coaches have given me the freedom to move up on offense anytime I want, and I felt it was the right time when a corner kick came up,” Martinez said.

The senior put himself in the right place at the right time. He knocked in a header off the corner kick by Jose Zamudio from about eight yards out to break the scoreless match and spark Palmetto to a 2-0 victory Wednesday night at Harllee Stadium.

The Tigers will host the district championship game Friday night against Lakewood Ranch, which defeated St. Petersburg Lakewood in its semifinal match. The second-seeded Mustangs beat Palmetto 1-0 during the regular season.

“The ball came to me, went off my head and in the goal. I went up front on my own from my sweeper position because we needed a goal,” Martinez said. “The coach has always given me the freedom to do that if I felt it was the right thing to do. I am a senior and didn’t want to go home yet, so we needed it.”

The top-seeded Tigers (16-2-2) handily defeated Braden River (6-5-2) 4-0 during the regular season, but the Pirates seemed like a different team this time. In the first half, they nearly matched Palmetto on offense with eight shots on goal while allowing nine.

“Jose Martinez has free reign, especially on our free kicks because he is one of our two best guys in the air,” Palmetto head coach Dustin Dahlquist said. “Those are goals that we expect from him. (Wednesday night) we played nervous at first. The last 20 minutes of the first half we just got out of our game, but a lot of that was Braden River putting pressure on us. They’ve gotten a lot better since the beginning of the year.”

Less than three minutes after Martinez scored, Zamudio got his team-leading 21st goal of the season, and the Tigers took control from there.

Braden River finished with nine shots on goal, and its goalie, Andrew Quijano, had eight saves. Palmetto had 18 shots on goal, and Brandon Tarpley had five saves.

“Palmetto is a great team, but we had them where we wanted them. Unfortunately, things just didn’t turn out our way,” Braden River head coach JanJay Gehndyu said. “They finished with the opportunities they had, and we didn’t. It could’ve gone either way. We started off the season rough, but they just snapped our five-game winning streak, so we did a lot at the end.”

Palmetto got good defensive efforts from Martinez, Edgar Campos, Ever Ramos and Angel Gonzalez, who was injured in the second half and might not be available for the district final.