What I got to seen while losing my voice friday night:
The Arizona 5A Soccer State Championship with No.1 Desert Vista and No.3 Salpointe Catholic. Opening stuff, an almost silenct national anthem, and some team huddles. Salpointe has somewhere around 100 fans at the game. 90 of which are students. DV has slightly more. However, they do live appox. 1000% closer; no hyperbole, so we didn't do so bad. Kickoff, and DV starts to dominate. 1 goal, 2 goal; scored sometime, who cares when. Lord, we are playing terrible. We have had possesion about 3% of this game; please help us. Sometime in there the it became the 2nd half. We finally get down in there box. The ball bounces all over hell and omg we scored. By this time the crown of lancers had grown a great deal. Salpointers were germenating out of nowhere. And when we scored. We went nuts. We had not driven for 2+ hours to not yell and bang on things that made a considerable amount of noise for a few dozen minutes when we scored. DV all of the sudden began playing poorly. I guess we (the crowd) and the goal had really gotten to them. They were playing broken. At this point, the game is an even match up. We both share possension. ((Crowd still yelling a whole bunch (we really were very loud and my hands were completely numb from banging on the stands and everything else that was metal and made a lot of noise) )) DV gets through our defense and Sean Brown makes one hell of a slide-tackle to deny a goal scoring opportunity. No ref, no!!! The little man in blue thinks that it was a foul and gives them a PK. A call that could have gone either way. Oh no fellow lancers, this will pretty much lock it up. I sorta didn't watch. Oh crap, here it comes...maybe Casey will get lucky...holy ****...the kid missed...he missed...crowd goes nuts again. Then the holy ones gets control of the ball and extends his scoring record. Did I just say that. Yep Fernando (most skilled player I have ever stepped on a field with) pockets it on a scrambling goalie. This tied the game and thus was the most important goal scored of the season so Mr.Recordholder gave the necessary celebration; running to the sideling in front of the fans and raising his hands like all the greats have done at one point or another. Needless to say, we went even nutser than before and continued to go nuts for the next 10 minutes or so which ended regulation. And yes, we had the momentuem. First 10 minute overtime; nada. Second 10 minute overtime, the had some chances and Casey made some really good saves. Now keep in mind that this is golden goal; aka: it's time for a hero. With 30 seconds left DV has possesion on our half of the field but somehow coughed it up. We took it down and somebody on our team (I think Kelly) got it with 10 seconds left. I believe I heard about 1000000000000000 salpointe fans yell give it to Fernando. And he did. Now the best player on the field has the ball 30 yards out with 8 seconds to go. The rest was a blurrrrrr. Not because my memory blurred it or anything, but he was actaully moving that fast. He beat the whole defense and then he beat the keeper. He shoots and the scores. We go really really really really nuts! (Sometime in there the clock hits 0) The ref waves it off saying -no goal-. At this point my voice imploaded, my brain imploaded, and my left deltoid imploaded (I was grabbing a pole and I squeezed it quite hard). If you followed the last few sentences and know anything about soccer or sports in general I do not need to explain to you the gravity of the situation, the story book ending that was robbed, or the goal that no ref in his right mind could wave off. ***I am now depressed after reliving that moment, so I am going to make the reast quick*** Triple overtime; nada. Quadrulple overtime; they score. It was a questionable call but I have watched it over and over again online and it was the right call. I talked to a person who has video on Fernando's 2nd overtime goal and he says that on the video it is apparent that his goal should have counted and thus Salpointe Catholic should be the 2006 Arizona 5A Soccer State Champions.