Mike Ridaught
Tuesday night’s Class 4A-District 2 boys soccer championship game was the first for soccer coach Morgan Dall’Acqua.
It was the second for senior Sean Allin.
Allin scored a goal and added an assist as top seed Santa Fe defeated No. 2 seed Suwannee (Live Oak), 3-1, in Alachua.
“I won before, my freshman year, but I barely played,” said Allin, who is the only current player who was a part of the program’s last district title in 2021. “It’s good to actually score a goal and contribute.”
Meanwhile, in his first season as head coach, Dall’Acqua has helped lead the Raiders to 11 wins – three more victories than the last two seasons combined – a district title, and a first-round state playoff berth next Tuesday.
“This was a wonderful evening for us,” he said. “The boys came out and performed very, very well. We had a tremendous amount of fan support, probably more people than I’ve seen at a Santa Fe game and that’s saying a lot.”
Santa Fe took the first lead of the game on a goal by freshman Caleb Freeman for a 1-0 lead.
“He had a great finish,” said Allin, who assisted on the play. “It was nice to celebrate. He was making good runs all game. Last game he scored a hat trick. He started this game and scored a banger, I mean it was pretty sweet.”
The opening goal came less than five minutes into the match.
“We felt like if we could have success early against them and punch a goal in that we could kind of soften up their coverage a bit,” Dall’Acqua said. “I think we did that pretty well with that early goal and at that point kind of established ourselves a little bit, maintaining possession, really forcing them to chase us around the field and kind of wear them out.”
Allin missed several shots in the opening half as the Raiders led 1-0 at intermission.
However, the senior got his chance almost 10 minutes into the second half on an assist by junior Clayton Morgan.
He spun away from a defender and found a shot, which hit the top of the left crossbar and went into the back of the net.
“I forgot how I got the ball, I kind of blanked, all I remember is I got an opportunity and I absolutely hit it as hard as I could, hit the crossbar in, and it felt amazing,” Allin said. “We were at 1-0 up and it should have been a lot more up and it felt good to get that goal and finally get ahead of them by a lot more than we should have, and then we had momentum after that just to keep going.”
His goal proved to be the game-winner, but the Raiders (11-3-2) added some insurance less than four minutes later.
Morgan scored on a deflection off of Allin for a commanding 3-0 lead.
“He did an amazing back heel to me,” Allin noted.
Senior Joel De La Cruz helped Suwannee (8-13-1) avoid the shutout on a penalty kick with 19:43 remaining to make the score 3-1.
Freeman, Morgan and Allin each had two shots on goal for Santa Fe, which will host a Class 4A-Region 1 Quarterfinal on Tuesday, Feb. 6, against an opponent to be determined.
“There’s a lot of really strong teams up in the Panhandle, folks over in the Jacksonville direction as well, so to be able to have the opportunity to play here at home is going to give us a bit of a leg up,” Dall’Acqua said. “If we can have the crowd support like we did this evening, there’s not many folks who will be able to come over here and have a lot of success, I mean it was really an imposing environment, so yeah maintaining that home field is huge for us.”
DISTRICT CHAMPIONSHIP RESULTS – TUESDAY, JAN. 30
BOYS
4A-District 2
1 Santa Fe (Alachua) 3, 2 Suwannee (Live Oak) 1
6A-District 4
2 Forest (Ocala) 5, 1 Buchholz 4 (OT) (PK 4-3)
GIRLS
2A-District 2
1 Lafayette (Mayo) 6, 3 Trenton 3
3A-District 4
1 P.K. Yonge 5, 2 Keystone Heights 0
