A strong season is over for Panther men’s soccer.
After ending their regular season with three wins and a tie, on the week of Nov. 3 the team kicked off the 5A state playoffs. With a win over North Buncombe they advanced to a second-round match, where they nearly upset #1 South Point.
Ending their regular season with an 8-12-3 record, the Panthers earned the 5A West’s #16 seed, hosting a first-round match with 17th-ranked North Buncombe Nov. 4. In a rematch of a 0-0 tie earlier this season, both sides traded chances through the first half-hour, but couldn’t break the deadlock.
In the 33rd minute Franklin attacked North Buncombe’s 18-yard box, where Jose Dominguez took a hard challenge from a defender. With no foul called the Black Hawks mounted a dangerous counter, but were thwarted by an excellent 2-on-1 stop from Malik Walker.
Both sides continued trading chances in the second half, entering the last quarter of the match still tied at zero. In the 63rd minute Franklin finally received a golden opportunity, when Arturo Soto drew a foul in North Buncombe’s box. Kevin Torres took the penalty kick for the Panthers, finding the right side of the net for the game’s first goal.
Down 1-0 the Black Hawks doubled their efforts from there, nearly scoring from 25 yards with 10 minutes to play. Torres soon gave Franklin some much-needed insurance however, finding the far top corner of the net from a similar distance. The Panthers defended their 2-0 lead to the final whistle.
“It feels good. We played them early on in the first game of our season. It was a tough match too – I’m pretty sure we tied 0-0 – so getting this ‘W’ really improves things for us this year,” said Torres after the game. With two goals including a beautiful strike to seal the game, the junior said he was just trying to help his team.
“[I was] just trying to find the back of the net, really. I guess all that adrenaline pumping really got me through it. ... I was open, so I was like, ‘I might as well; I have nothing to lose.’ We were up 1-0, so I got the best of it.”
In beating North Buncombe the Panthers advanced to the second round of the state playoffs, where they received an unfortunate draw. With a 17-1-3 record, South Point (Belmont) earned the 5A West’s top tournament seed, hosting Franklin Nov. 6 still well-rested from a first-round bye. The Red Raiders controlled possession early on in Gaston County, scoring from a difficult angle just seven minutes in.
Franklin answered in the 19th minute, winning a throw-in deep inside South Point’s half. From there Cameron Lyons found Anthony Mora Martinez in South Point’s box, but the sophomore was fouled before he could receive the ball. Torres buried the penalty kick inside the right goalpost, tying the match 1-1 where it remained until the half.
South Point kept the pressure on Franklin into the second, scoring with a volley off a throw in the 51st minute. They nearly doubled their lead just three minutes later, but were thwarted by a last-second sliding goal line clear from Walker.
Franklin answered once again just six minutes later, when Sebastian Miranda Rivera stole the ball from a South Point attacker. Moments later Pablo Odilon found Torres behind the Raider defense, where the junior found the top right corner of the net to tie the match.
Franklin finally took the lead in the 68th minute, when Lyons found Soto with a 30-yard pass through the Raider defense. With one more defender to beat, Soto faked right and shot left, finding the inside of the near post for the go-ahead goal.
South Point responded with less than four minutes left however, when Franklin seemed to defend a free kick but was called for standing too close. South Point then retook the kick from 28 yards, and tied the match with a strike to the top of the net.
Disaster struck Franklin in the final seconds of regulation, when Drew Hodges found Mora Martinez near midfield with a goal kick. There the sophomore kept the ball moving upfield with a clever header, where it bounced several yards behind South Point’s defense. From there Dominguez raced the last defender to the goal, but was fouled from behind near the top of the box. No free kick was given however, and the match moved to extra time. There the Raiders scored twice to win 5-3.
“In 35 years of coaching, that’s the toughest loss I’ve ever had,” said head coach Bryan Wilkinson after the match. “We were 3-2 up with three minutes to go; I can’t criticize the referees, and obviously we should have finished the game off, but I thought there were three or four refereeing decisions in the last three minutes that were just absolutely diabolical, and so it was tough.”
“But, the boys played with character and discipline and organization, and our coaches did a tremendous job with the game plan, and everything went as well as it could have. Their coach came up to me afterwards and said we were just absolutely tremendous, and their parents came up to me and said we deserved to win. We did absolutely everything we could have done, and at the end of the game that’s what I loved about it, but also that’s what causes me not to be able to sleep at night.”
Despite the disappointing result, the match brought to an end an excellent finish to the year from Franklin, who had earned four wins and a tie in their previous five games. That streak came on the heels of five straight losses in early October, before Wilkinson led a team-only meeting that turned their season around. Looking back on his first season at the helm, the longtime manager credited his team for building a winning culture.
“We had a big team meeting before this transition happened, and we actually laid it all out,” he said. “Each coach and each player got to have their opportunity to speak about where we were and what we were doing and why we were going where we were, and that was probably the pivotal point and the change in the season.”
“We don’t develop teams; our goal as a coaching staff is to develop programs so you’ve got longevity, you’ve got transition, you’ve got a development from JV to varsity, you’re working at the middle school and it becomes one culture, and culture is what wins championships. It doesn’t just have a winning season; it wins championships, and that’s our ultimate goal.”