Class 2A boys soccer: Stillwater caps perfect season – TwinCities.com-Pioneer Press

Dominant all year offensively, the Stillwater boys soccer team needed only two goals to cap a perfect season.

Colman Farrington and Kohei Adams scored in the second half, and the Ponies beat Wayzata 2-0 on Thursday in the Class 2A state championship game at U.S. Bank Stadium. It is the third state title for Stillwater (22-0), the first since back-to-back crowns in 1995-96.

The Ponies ended the regular season ranked No. 1 in the state and fourth in the USA Today High School Sports/National Soccer Coaches Association of America Super 25.

“It’s always been ‘Road to the Bank,’ everything we’ve done,” Farrington said. “It feels amazing.”

Wayzata (18-1-3) lost in the state title game for the second time in three years. The Trojans fell to Anoka 2-1 in a shootout in 2014.

“I told the boys afterwards that we’re sitting here in our 22nd game of the season and our first loss. They’ve got nothing to hang their heads about,” Wayzata coach Dominic Duenas said.

Looking for a spark, Farrington came through for the Ponies less than three minutes into the second half.

Jacob Lagus sent a cross to the middle of the box, where it went through Miguel Caravias to Farrington. The senior scored into the lower right corner for his 12th goal of the season and second in two games.

From there, the top-seeded Ponies held off the second-seeded Trojans for their 14th shutout. Stillwater allowed just 11 goals this season.

“We have a great back four. There are six or seven players that play back there, two very good goalkeepers. We defend by going forward,” Stillwater coach Jake Smothers said. “We want to put as much pressure on teams as we can, and it worked today. Wayzata was starting to launch that ball deeper and deeper and isolate their top players on three or four of our guys.”

Stillwater, which scored six goals in both its quarterfinal win over Mounds View and semifinal win over Andover, entered the title tilt averaging 4.4 goals per game. Stillwater failed to score at least three goals just six times all season.

Smothers used “dedicated“ and “ambitious” to describe his players, noting that they have played at a high level since before they were teenagers and through club soccer. “That consistency is borne from their dedication to the sport,” he said.

Adams, who had a hat trick in the semifinal and hit the post with a shot in the 63rd minute on Thursday, scored an insurance goal in the 73rd minute by deflecting a shot from Patrick Allan.

“When it was 1-0, we knew that any mistake of ours would be a tie game,” Farrington said. “It gave us a tremendous feeling knowing that we’ve got this.”

Stillwater goalie Fred LeClair had four saves, but his biggest was a sliding stop in the opening minute to thwart Patrick Weah.

“That would have been a game-changer, putting us on top right away and putting them in kind of a panic mode,” said Wayzata defender Tyler Stevens. “We knew we could score. We usually score 3, 4 goals a game, so we weren’t too worried about that.”

Smothers is confident the Ponies would have responded.

“Every goal we’ve conceded this year seems to have been in a situation where we needed to respond quickly, and we’ve done that,” he said.

Less than a minute after a header from Caravias hit the crossbar, Adams nearly scored in the final seconds of the half, but his shot from in the box went just wide. The senior put his hands to his head for nearly the entire walk to the bench.

“(Caravias’s) ball off the crossbar and then Kohei’s near miss showed us that we were going to get some really good looks on goal,” Smothers said. “The second half was just right at them.”