- December 25, 2024
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FPC goalkeeper Teagan Paulo (center) recorded a clean sheet against Seabreeze. Photo by Brent Woronoff
Seabreeze's Rocco Dall'Orto. Photo by Brent Woronoff
FPC's Evan Papadakos and Seabreeze's Sebastian Mendoza. Photo by Brent Woronoff
FPC defender Brian Jenkins kicks the ball out. Photo by Brent Woronoff
Young soccer club players line up with FPC's varsity players for the national anthem on Nov. 21. Photo by Brent Woronoff
FPC's Dylan Hardesty. Photo by Brent Woronoff
FPC's Jack Runnoe and Seabreeze's Charlie Triplett (10) go after the ball. Photo by Brent Woronoff
The Sandcrabs weren't able to convert their scoring opportunities. Photo by Brent Woronoff
Seabreeze's Liam Piazza. Photo by Brent Woronoff
Seabreeze's Rocco Dall'Orto (3) challenges FPC's Evan Papadakos (23). Photo by Brent Woronoff
Goalkeeper Teagan Paulo hugs a teammate after FPC's 2-0 victory against Seabreeze. Photo by Brent Woronoff
Flagler Palm Coast goalkeeper Teagan Paulo knew the history. His coaches made sure every player on the team knew about Seabreeze's eight-game win streak over FPC dating back to 2016.
It was a losing streak that all four of the Bulldogs’ coaches had been a part of when they were FPC players. The last two times the teams had played — in the 2021-22 season — Teagan’s brother, Tanner Paulo, was in goal.
On Thursday, Nov. 21, the streak ended as Jack Moberly and Evan Papadakos scored second-half goals to lift FPC to a 2-0 home victory over Seabreeze.
Tanner Paulo, now FPC’s goalkeeper coach, was very happy, Teagan said.
“It was a little bit of revenge for him,” Teagan Paulo said.
FPC ended one streak and continued another. The Bulldogs have not conceded a goal at home since the 2022-23 season.
Teagan Paulo now has four clean sheets on the season as FPC improved to 4-1-1. The junior has allowed just one goal this season — in the 1-1 tie with Spruce Creek. He missed the Bulldogs’ 3-0 loss to St. Joseph on Nov. 7 because he is also a kicker/punter on the football team, which had a game that night.
Paulo had eight saves to preserve the win over the Sandcrabs.
The defense played really good,” he said. “You could see the new confidence from having the boys back, me and Mikhail (Zysek). We have a bit of pride in ourselves right now.
— TEAGAN PAULO, FPC goalkeeper
“The defense played really good,” he said. “You could see the new confidence from having the boys back, me and Mikhail (Zysek, the football wide receiver and soccer defender). We have a bit of pride in ourselves right now.”
Seabreeze fell to 2-4 in Alex Perez’s first season as head coach. He last coached in 2017 when he was an assistant on the Sandcrabs’ last state championship team.
He said the Sandcrabs had a gameplan against FPC that worked throughout an evenly contested first half.
“We were practicing the past few days on how to defend the very good strikers they have,” Perez said. “So, the gameplan for a half, it was perfect. We got three very good chances. Teagan the goalkeeper made a great save. We were very close.”
Paulo said he got low, got his leg on the ball and kept the score at 0-0. But with 2:12 left in the first half, Paulo left the game after taking a hard hit from a collision with a Seabreeze player and FPC’s Felipe De Campos.
Paulo was back in goal for the start of the second half, and less than two minutes in, Moberly scored his fourth goal of the season off an assist from Rami Amiri, head coach Ramtin Amiri’s younger brother.
“It was probably the best possible start we could have had to the second half which fueled us for the rest of the game, because, to be honest, I think we were in complete control in the second half,” Ramtin Amiri said. “The first half was kind of even; they had a couple of chances. But in the second half, we were phenomenal and everyone was working from from minute one to 40.”
The following day, the Bulldogs announced that Moberly has committed to play soccer next season at Toccoa Falls College in Georgia.
Moberly and fellow senior Aron Binkley each scored 19 goals for the Bulldogs last season. They expected to battle for the scoring lead again, but Binkley tore an ACL a week before preseason and recently underwent surgery.
“He's a very crucial player and he knows that,” Ramtin Amiri said. “But he still has a role on the sideline, even though he can’t play. The players have a purpose to play now. They played for him and he's here to support them, and some players are stepping up.”
Papadakos sealed the deal with his first goal of the season in the 28th minute of the second half. The senior has returned to the Bulldogs after spending the past two seasons at a soccer academy in Argentina, Ramtin Amiri said.
Perez said the Sandcrabs made mistakes on the backline on each of the Bulldogs’ goals.
“We have a very young team, but a lot of talent,” Perez said. “We need to put those pieces together. It's going to take time, but we're getting there, little by little.”
Seabreeze, long a state powerhouse, is coming off its first losing season since 2010. The Bulldogs’ win over the Sandcrabs was their first since 2015. Seabreeze outscored FPC 34-5 during its eight-game winning streak. Ramtin Amiri played in FPC’s 6-1 win over Seabreeze in 2015, but he also played in the Bulldogs’ 8-1 loss on his senior night in 2017.
“All of our coaches are (FPC) alumni, so we all have had an experience on what it's like to lose to them,” Amiri said. “I was on the last team that beat them, but I was also on the team that almost got (mercy-ruled) by them the year they won a state title. But all of us had the bad, sour taste in our mouths of losing to them. So we wanted to make sure that didn't happen again. I let the boys know, ‘I don't want to go into (Thanksgiving) break with a loss in the back of our minds.’ So, we made sure we didn’t do that.”
Seabreeze will be back in action on Dec. 3 at Matanzas, while FPC will try to win its fourth straight on Dec. 2 at DeLand.
