Lakewood Ranch High ready for boys soccer state championship against Weston Cypress Bay

Gathered in a semi-circle, Lakewood Ranch High’s players lifted their heads. Mustangs head coach Vito Bavaro stood in front clutching a poster folded in half.

Bavaro unfolded it, revealing a state championship ring with the word, “Goal,” etched in big lettering.

Then he reiterated his pre-practice message that the team’s routine would go unchanged, and their mission is to win when they play their next match.

That moment is Saturday’s Class 5A state title game against Weston Cypress Bay at 4 p.m. at DeLand’s Spec Martin Stadium.

“We need to not get shell-shocked that it’s a state final,” Bavaro said. “We need to get into our heads and be ready to play. And if we do that, we’ll be in good shape.”

While it’s the first time these Mustangs (20-2-1) are playing for a state championship, it’s not their first time experiencing a match with high stakes attached.

Senior midfielder Tyler Puhalovich is part of Lakewood Ranch’s core group that’s played together for years.

As U-12 club players, they won everything in Florida.

When they got to the U-15 age level for club, they continued adding hardware with forwards Ricky Yanez and Pablo Vargas joining the team.

“Since then we’ve kind of split up a little bit (at club), but we’ve been playing together since we’ve been so young,” Puhalovich said. “Now we’re all back together, so hopefully we can just do it all over again.”

Vargas was the team’s talisman in the state semifinal victory over Sanford Seminole. He scored the decisive goal just seconds after re-entering the match from receiving a yellow card. He’s tallied a team-high 22 goals this season.

Cypress Bay (20-1-2) has its own 20-goal scorer in Mateo Pieschacon.

“He’s very technically gifted,” Cypress Bay head coach Colin Ilgner said. “... We do have players that score goals, but he is very lethal in the box because he is technically gifted. So if you put the ball around him, he will find space and take a chance.”

Looking at the limited footage he’s seen of Cypress Bay, Bavaro sees a mirror image of his Mustangs: a team built in possession and link-up passing for a quick, attacking style.

“They play a lot like we do,” Bavaro said. “They like to send the ball through the middle, they like to own the outside (and) they’re quick. I think it’s going to be a good game. We have to come out aggressively early.”

The Lightning are just that: ridiculously fast-paced. Cypress Bay has four state titles, winning its most recent in 2015.

Boasting a strong club program in the area coupled with a large Latin community in Weston, which is located in South Florida, meant a strong built-in soccer culture that the Lightning have benefited from.

“We have lots of players from Venezuela and all of the Latin American countries,” Ilgner said. “This is a hub for those countries, so we do have a good crop of players. ... It’s basically a community of a football haven here.”

A Manatee County public school has never won a state soccer championship, let alone reached one. Only Saint Stephen’s has one, capturing its lone boys soccer state title when the Falcons played in the fall back in 2001.

History is on Cypress Bay’s side, but history isn’t what wins matches.

For the Mustangs, they’ll need their ‘A’ game, which means cleaning up some defensive lapses that occurred during set pieces against Sanford Seminole, a team Lakewood Ranch narrowly edged 4-3 in the state semifinals on Feb. 10.

“I think 2-0 is probably the worst lead in soccer,” Bavaro said. “If we look at when we’re giving up goals, it’s 2-0 and we kind of forget the game is still going on.”

This story was originally published February 17, 2017 at 6:57 PM with the headline "Lakewood Ranch High ready for boys soccer state championship against Weston Cypress Bay."