Prep soccer: Miyamura boys clinch 1-4A crown

GALLUP

A year ago, the Miyamura boys soccer team had to settle on being the district’s reserve champion.

During the 2021 district campaign, the league had Miyamura and Bloomfield finish with identical records of 5-2-1, but the district tiebreaker favored the Bobcats.

On Tuesday night, the Patriots left nothing to chance in its regular season finale as they won the district title outright with a 2-0 win over Bloomfield.

“Honestly, it feels amazing,” Miyamura midfielder Mateo Juarez said. “This is my junior year, and I’ve been playing since my eighth grade year and this is our first district title for soccer in 12 years.”

Miyamura soccer coach Ralph Castaneda said he was really proud of his boys for winning the district title in a sport that is less recognizable to other sports like football and basketball.

“I think it’ll point some faces and eyes at our program,” he said. “It’s big because people can look at us and say, ‘Hey we can actually play this other game and be successful at it.’”

With the two-goal win, the Patriots finished the district season at 7-1 overall with the rest of the District 1-4A members concluding its regular season on Thursday.

Kirtland Central has the next best record at 6-1, heading into final game with Bloomfield.

Should KC win, the Broncos will push its record to 7-1 overall, tying Miyamura’s record.

The Patriots, however, owns the tiebreaker based on its head-to-head meeting with KC. The score differential between the two squads has Miyamura leading by a goal.

“We were aware of that and all we had to do was get mentally locked in,” Juarez said, who was involved with the two goals Miyamura scored.

Juarez assisted sophomore striker Osvaldo Gardea with the Patriot’s opening goal when he dribbled the ball inside the box before passing the ball off to Gardea.

In the second half, Juarez scored an insurance goal with a free kick as his attempt sailed over Bloomfield’s towering wall.

“We had multiple free kicks and it’s hard to get over that wall,” Juarez said. “I just looked over the spacing and I saw my teammates crowding the box in front of the goalie and I knew if I put it in there, it would have a chance of going in.”

Castaneda said the two goals were positives in the game, but he felt that his team played sluggish.

“Our touches weren’t quite 100 percent,” he said. “I mean, the boys were moving the ball and the 1-2 (combinations) we asked for were there.

“They were running overlaps, they were looking wide and trying to get crosses off,” he said. “It was our final pass to put the ball into the net that was lacking today.”

The emphasis during the halftime talk, Castaneda said, was about finishing.

“For a lack of a better word, we were being too unselfish,” he said. “Nobody wanted to take that last shot and finish off, so that was our thing at halftime – somebody had to finish the ball.”

As the district champion, Miyamura earned the district’s automatic bid into the 4A state brackets, which will have 12 teams.

The state brackets will be released by the New Mexico Activities Association on Sunday.

“I think we’re going to be one of the teams in the bottom six,” Castaneda said. “We’ll just have to wait and see.”

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