FAYETTEVILLE -- Apparently for Lakeside, the fifth time is the charm.
In the first four appearances for the Rams (19-6-1) at the Class 5A state soccer finals, they ended up taking second-place, but on their fifth trip to Fayetteville, they managed to earn a 4-3 victory over Valley View (21-4-2) to bring the hardware back to Garland County.
"(It feels) about like Steve Young getting his first Super Bowl," said Lakeside head coach Craig Moses, who helmed the Rams for the four trips to Fayetteville. "It's like getting that monkey off your back. You get here, and it just never worked out for you. This year, we got a pretty good lead, and we just got tired. Valley View is a heck of a team. You've got to give all the credit to them for coming back and making a game out of it.
"It just feels great for these guys. It's not necessarily me; I'm going to still be around. It's these guys that have put in the work for four years, and all these 17 seniors I've got won't have this opportunity again."
Junior goalkeeper Devin Nieto was named the game's Most Valuable Player after recording eight saves and eight blocks to collect the win for the Rams.
"Devin, he's been great the whole tournament," Moses said. "All year, he's been pretty phenomenal, but all tournament, he's just stepped the game up a little bit higher, and he deserves the MVP. I'm proud of him."
With Moses taking the Rams to Fayetteville for their fifth state soccer final as head coach, he felt this team was similar to the team he brought to the finals in 2014, but this year's group had more "grit."
"This group really had grit," he said. "We have had things go bad to us all year long. They never quit. They really showed their character all through the tournament because we could have easily given up throughout the season at different points, but we came together.
"I think it's just the senior leadership we had on this team would not give up. I think the little difference that we've had -- they were real close to the '14 team, but they didn't have very many seniors. This group here just would not give up. Quit was not in their vocabulary."
After building a 2-1 lead at the half, the score increased to 4-1 in favor of Lakeside within the first 10 minutes of the second half. The Blazers managed to make a comeback however, pulling within 4-2 at about the 60th minute before scoring their final goal with 3:36 left in the match.
"Any time you can't finish early on, it does put you a little bit behind the 8-ball," said Valley View head coach Ron Teat. "We just made some mistakes that we hadn't made all year. We make those mistakes early on, and we're not sitting here in the championship game. We just made a few of them.
"Just like I told them, it was easy, down 4-1, to just quit, and we kept fighting back, kept fighting back and gave a chance to at least tie it here at the end and maybe send it to overtime, so I'm proud of them for that."
Philip Gayle put the Rams on the board first with a penalty kick. Grant Viscardis was tripped in the box, leading to the penalty, and Gayle put the ball into the top right corner of the box from the spot with 16:38 off the clock.
The Blazers, who had bleached their hair blonde in anticipation for the state final, leveled the score about four minutes later.
Weston Myers was fouled in the box with 21:09 left in the first half, sending the senior to the spot for the penalty kick. The kick hit the left post, deflecting back into the net as Nieto was unable to get a hand on it.
"We knew early on in this match that it was going to be back-and-forth," Teat said. "Right after that (first goal), there's a penalty, and we get to equalize it. We knew it was going to be back-and-forth and knew that we couldn't make many errors, and in the end, we made a few too many."
Lakeside struck back almost immediately as Christian Ramirez put the go-ahead goal into the net just over a minute later. Ramirez was about 18 yards off the left post when he kicked it into the left side of the net to make it 2-1 with 20:08 left in the half for the Rams second shot of the match.
"We have a guy coming off the bench, hadn't played a whole lot all year long, Christian, knocks that goal in on a knock back, kick back," Moses explained. "Like we've talked all week long, we've got to have people there. The ball's going to get knocked back, and we've got to have people there to finish it up, and he did that tonight for us."
The Rams increased their lead quickly after the start of the second half.
Gayle took a shot, but Jacob Brown got the save. Brown bumbled the ball on the ground, allowing Viscardis to get a foot on the ball and put it high into the center of the net with 2:46 off the clock.
"We got a little luck there, having it right there at our foot," Moses said. "He finished it when he needed to, and that's what matters. When you get the opportunities, you've got to put it away."
Five minutes later, a shot by Gayle was mishandled before a Valley View defender attempted to clear the ball but instead knocked it in to make it 4-1 with 8:29 off the clock in the second half.
"I know those kids feel terrible," Teat said. "I know they're trying hard. It's just one of those days where their missed clearance just happened to be in the back of the net. It's just uncharacteristic, and in a game like this, you can't have that."
Jesus Mendoza pulled the Blazers within 4-2 with 20:05 left in the match as he knocked the ball into the bottom of the net from just inside the goal box off a cross from Weston Myers as Nieto was unable to get to the ball.
The Blazers never relented, scoring their final goal with 3:36 left in the match. Matthew Layton received a cross from Nathan Tyler, squeezing it under a diving Nieto to set the final.
"One of the things we talked about was that we could not get behind with them," Moses said. "They're a good team, no doubt. We knew if we could just play hard defense, kind of mess their rhythm up a little bit, maybe we could hold on. When we got the lead, I felt really good that our defense would hold them out. We got tired, and they never did. They never gave up, and they put some away there at the end."
The Rams had 22 shots in the match with nine on-goal for 40.9 percent efficiency. Nieto had a save rating of 73 percent, and Lakeside's defense increased the team's rating to 81 percent with five additional saves.
Valley View shot just under 50 percent on the day with 15 of its 32 shots on target for 46.9 percent efficiency. Brown tallied five saves and four blocks for a save rating of 56 percent with the Blazers' adding one save to bring the team's rating to 70 percent.
Sports on 05/20/2018