Lafayette ends Port St. Joe run

PORT ST. JOE – A penalty kick. Seconds remaining in regulation. Score knotted at 2-all.

For the team with the kick, Mayo Lafayette, it was the best of circumstances. For the host Tiger Sharks it was the worst.

Aruto Negrete converted the penalty kick, completing a hat trick, with the clock winding down to finish a comeback from two goals down and Port St. Joe’s season as the Hornets (12-5-2) won 3-2 at Sam Cox Field in a Region 1-1A quarterfinal.

For Lafayette it was a first-ever playoff win in soccer. For Port St. Joe, hopes of reaching a third consecutive region final were dashed.

“It was a tough way to lose but when you battle like that sometimes in sports those things happen, they don’t go your way,” said Port St. Joe coach Gary Hindley. “Frankly, we are not quite good enough. When they put the pressure on us we did not play good smart soccer.

“We had chances to score the third goal and then (the penalty kick) is to tie. We battled hard; we just weren’t good enough.”

After absorbing early pressure from the Hornets in the opening half, the Tiger Sharks carved a 2-0 lead over the span of 13 minutes.

In the 15^th minute, Drew Lacour put a gorgeous header through the middle of the Lafayette defense to Marcel Duarte, who split two defenders and used the back of his right foot to punt the ball over and past a charging goalie, scoring his team-leading 20^th goal.

In the 28^th minute, Javarri Beachum used smarts to put Port St. Joe another goal. On a pass back from the defense, the Hornet goalie illegally handled the ball, allowing Port St. Joe an indirect kick.

Before any player could react, Beachum took the handoff from the referee, spotted the ball, knocked a slow roller four feet left to Lacour who scored into an open net.

But the Hornets closed to 2-1 before intermission under circumstances that would prove arrestingly familiar.

With 39 seconds remaining in regulation time, Port St. Joe was called for a penalty in the box and Negrete, the Hornets leading scorer with 25 goals entering the game, converted and the Hornets had life.

They came out using differences in size and physicality to impose their will on the pace of the game, playing the majority of minutes in the Tiger Shark end before Negrete netted a left-footer from 15 yards directly in front of the net to tie the game with 23 minutes left.

 For the next 22:53 the teams battled furiously, the ball going back and forth, both teams with chances in the others end, but unable to convert. They finished nearly even in shots, 14-12 in favor of the Hornets.

“This is our first-ever soccer win and to do it here in St. Joe against a good team, it feels good,” said Hornet coach Danny Glover. “We’ve worked hard. We are a team that seems to play better when we are behind. We are concerned when we are ahead. We have from Mayo; we play with a chip on our shoulder.”