Three days in Tavares confirmed Palmetto as a surprise boys soccer state contender

The yearly trips to Tavares have become an annual tradition for Palmetto and a chance to see where the Tigers stack up among the best teams in Florida. The Mike Stone Invitational at Hickory Point, previously called The Hickory Point Invitational, is where Palmetto seasons are made or broken.

For three days after Christmas and before New Year’s Eve, teams with late-season aspirations converge on Hickory Point Recreation Park to suss out who should be thinking about a state championship and who should just be hoping they can reach the final four.

“Usually,” Palmetto head coach Rui Fernandes said, “the Hickory Point tournament for us is exactly that. It’s a way of players starting to understand the system and start getting to playoff season.”

The Tigers had already positioned themselves as one of the best teams in region before they traveled to the middle of the state, but they were still somewhat unproven. Their season began with a Class 4A-District 11 loss to Venice in Palmetto and the nine straight wins that followed all came against teams that ultimately didn’t win their respective districts.

In three days, the nine-game winning streak blossomed to 12 with one win against a previously unbeaten team and another against a team which went on to win 20 games during the regular season. In three days, the Tigers asserted themselves as one of the favorites in Class 4A.

Palmetto’s quest for its first state championship will begin Wednesday in the Class 4A-11 semifinals against either Braden River or Punta Gorda Charlotte in Palmetto. The Tigers (17-1-1) enter the postseason not having lost since their opening game against the Indians, who finished second in the district and with a signature win against Lakewood Ranch, Manatee County’s other most likely state-championship contender.

It all began, though, in Tavares.

“Once we won that tournament,” Fernandes said, “it’s not a turning point, but it solidifies that we are pretty good and we’re doing things well.”

Palmetto entered the 2016-17 season after a rare mediocre campaign. In Fernandes’ first season as head coach, the Tigers had struggled to a .500 record, the first in at least five seasons and with about half the starting lineup turning over there was no guarantee Palmetto was building back to state contention.

Fernandes concedes he thought the Tigers “would be OK” before the season began and he saw the way a deeper group than in previous season coalesced into cohesive unit.

“I think we came together more as a group,” said Ryan Hirst, who took over as Palmetto’s starting goalkeeper at the end of last season. “The team bonded well, I think, preseason. We did a lot more preseason than we did before that, than we previously did, to get ready for this season.”

At the start of the season, the Tigers leaned heavily on their offense, and scoring is still Palmetto’s hallmark. The Tigers average 4.3 goals per game using a 3-1-4-2 formation to push the ball down the sidelines and switch the field to set up one of their two dynamic forwards. In nearly every game this season, Fernandes said, midfielder Ty Dolan has assisted either Jorge Morales or Candido Calvillo for a goal, but eight different players have scored at least four times and five players have handed out five or more assists.

Those three, though, along with Hirst, and midfielders Frankie Arroyo, Alfredo Manriquez and Gilberto Caballaro make up the returning-starters portion of Palmetto’s lineup.

The bigger surprise as been the Tigers’ defensive progress and with clean sheets in three straight games to end the season it’s become a positive to nearly match the offensive production.

This past week, Palmetto’s success earned them some national recognition beyond MaxPreps.com’s computers, which have the Tigers ranked as the No. 2 team in the state and No. 12 nationally among states that play soccer during the winter season. TopDrawerSoccer.com finally placed the Tigers in its Florida rankings as the No. 15 team in the state.

“It was a process. I don’t think anybody thought we were going to do this good this season,” said Arroyo, who is a team captain alongside Hirst. “With a whole new team coming in, I don’t think anybody expected us to do this good .We just came out and played every game.”

This story was originally published January 22, 2017 at 3:56 PM with the headline "Three days in Tavares confirmed Palmetto as a surprise boys soccer state contender."