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Defense keys Pine View's soccer titleBy Times staff writer © St. Petersburg Times, published January 17, 2001 LAND O'LAKES -The Pine View Middle School boys soccer team scored the same number of goals -- 19 -- as it did last year. It's the number of goals the opposition scored that led to a turnaround. Pine View had the stingiest defense among the nine teams in the Pasco County Middle School Athletic Conference. The Panthers yielded just three goals in eight games, which led to a 7-1 record and their first championship since 1998. Defense also played a key role that season, when Pine View went 6-1-1 and allowed four goals. "We played better defense this year. We were a little more solid," said Robert Shirmohammad, who now has three titles in nine seasons as Pine View's coach. "When you only give up three goals, you aren't going to lose many games." Two of those goals came in the Panthers' fifth game and led to their only loss, 2-1 to second-place Hudson. "That was the win of the year," Hudson coach John Weyand said of the game in which Alex Hayes and Jeremy Enix scored. "We probably had the worst game of the season against (Hudson)," Shirmohammad said. "We should have been undefeated. We really played some good soccer after that loss." The Panthers' defensive success was keyed by the play of keeper Kyle Boerner (six shutouts), sweeper Sean Bokee, stopper Ryan O'Connell and left back Mike Beach. Boerner trained with Mark Sheppard, a former keeper and teammate of Shirmohammad at the University of Florida, and Shirmohammad said those sessions paid off. "He doesn't make many mistakes," Shirmohammad said of Boerner. "He knows where to be positionally." Offensively, midfielders B.J. Jenkins and Alex Gorgen fed the ball to Pine View's leading scorer, Dustin Stewart, who had 14 goals. While the win over Pine View highlighted Hudson's season, Weyand described his team's lone defeat -- 4-3 to River Ridge -- as "a heart-breaker. But we'll be there next year." Weyand's optimism stems in part on the likely return of seventh-grade keeper Andrew Wilson, who recorded five shutouts. Twins Marshall and Matthew Bielski, along with sweeper Craig Bialkoski, also contributed to Hudson allowing the second-fewest goals in the league (11). Hudson also made its mark on offense by setting two team records, 12 goals by Enix and 30 as a team, which was two fewer than River Ridge. "We had some speed this year," Weyand said of Enix, Jeffrey Masterson (second on the team with seven goals) and Brandon Armstrong.
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