Thursday, 6:45 p.m. – Boys’ High School Soccer
Santa Fe (Alachua) at Oak Hall (Gainesville)
Join Marty Pallman (Play-by-play) for this non-district Alachua County battle.
This is the regular season finale for the visiting Raiders. Santa Fe (12-6-3) finished third in their district and will play PK Yonge (Gainesville) on Tuesday at Santa Fe High School in the Class 2A-District 5 tournament. They are a very young team who plays with only three seniors as starters. They tend to play with a high tempo dynamic style and use a lot of high pressure. Head coach Dave Silva said he likes his players to take as many shots as possible. They are also very good in corner kicks.
Santa Fe lost against Oak Hall, 3-2, last week. They also tied 1-1 against Buchholz the night before), and Silva said he feels that his team didn’t play their best game.
Oak Hall enters 7-5-2, and the team has been inconsistent with performance according to coach Andy Westfall.
“We have been plagued by issues with attendance initially due to the number of fall sport players transitioning form other teams to ours, a few weeks into our regular season. We lost our goalie early on but have had two players step up (Dawsson Adolfsson and Ivan Kuznetsov) and play well.”
The Eagles have lost to teams they were expected to beat and vice versa. At full strength, they are probably the best team in the district in terms of physicality and talent, according to Westfall, “but will need to do a better job of possessing the ball as we roll into districts to upstage St. Joe’s (St. Augustine) in the second round. Fortunately, we are peaking right now in preparation for district next Tuesday in Jacksonville.”
