By ROY HESS | THE BROWNSVILLE HERALD
Beginning today, a multitude of soccer players converge on Brownsville Sports Park for three days of competition as the Brownsville ISD boys and girls tournaments get underway.
It’s the 36th consecutive year for the BISD boys tournament and the 19th for the girls.
This year, a total of 60 teams (32 girls and 28 boys) are entered in the two tournaments with a combined 224 games (126 girls and 98 boys) scheduled.
By all accounts, it will be quite an undertaking with play starting today at 8 a.m. for girls and 9 a.m. for boys. After two days of pool play in four groups for each tournament, the quarterfinals for girls and boys in Gold and Silver brackets are scheduled at 9 a.m. Saturday. The championship matches are set for Saturday afternoon for both boys and girls.
The defending champions are McAllen High for the girls and Rivera (Bracket A) and La Joya Juarez-Lincoln (Bracket B) for the boys.
McHi, which defeated Los Fresnos 2-1 in penalty kicks in last year’s final, is not returning. Instead, the Lady Bulldogs are playing at a tournament in Corpus Christi this week.
The Rivera and Juarez-Lincoln boys each won their brackets at the BISD Tournament last season, and for the third straight year, by mutual agreement, a game to determine an overall tournament champion was not played. Rivera is back again, as are all the Brownsville teams, and Juarez-Lincoln, a state tournament qualifier in 2017, is as well.
With so many teams entered, there figures to be a wide range of competition on tap with maybe some pools looking tougher than others.
“Our pool is going to be difficult,” Pace girls coach Jesus O. Villarreal said. “It has some soccer teams that by tradition have always shown to be top programs. In fact, three of the four (girls) brackets are also very competitive, but it seems that our bracket, Pool B, has about six programs with winning traditions and (that’s considering) only four teams will advance to Saturday’s competition.
“Indeed, the BISD Tournament has become one of the most competitive tournaments in the region,” Villarreal added. “So that means at any time during the tournament two top programs will have to face each other either in pool play or during elimination play. It seems our pool will have more higher-level games than the rest.”
ON THE MARK
The ones who figure to be top scorers in District 32-5A girls soccer this season are already finding the net with regularity as proven by the past weekend’s tournament play.
At the Border Olympics Tournament in Laredo, Brownsville Veterans Memorial’s Samantha Bodden had 16 goals in six games. At the Waller Classic, the Porter girls played four games and Priscila Cortinas scored nine goals, while Pace’s Kryssie Rivera tallied six goals in three games, all victories, at Houston’s Spring Branch Tournament.
The Cowgirls, Lady Vikings and Lady Chargers are all playing in the BISD Tournament along with the other Brownsville schools.
STRONG START
The Port Isabel boys opened their season in a big way at home Tuesday by defeating Monte Alto 6-2 in a non-district matchup.
Coach Crespin Gonzalez Jr. is in his first season guiding the Tarpons.
Forwards Brayan Medina and Jonatan Rivera plus midfielder Jair Prieto each scored a pair of goals for the Tarpons. Also, midfielder Saul Beltran recorded three assists for the Tarpons and goalkeeper Adrian Mendoza was a solid performer guarding the net.
Port Isabel next plays at Edcouch-Elsa at 7 p.m. Friday.
A NATIONAL CHAMP
Adrian Montalvo, a 2016 Hanna graduate, now plays soccer for the University of Charleston (West Virginia) Golden Eagles, who won the NCAA Division II national championship on Dec. 2 in Kansas City. The Golden Eagles defeated Lynn University 1-0 (3-1 penalty kicks) in the final to finish the season 21-1-2.
Montalvo is a sophomore midfielder on the team.
The University of Charleston is one of the top NCAA Division II men’s soccer programs in the nation and has qualified for the Final Four of the playoffs during each of the last four years.
Roy Hess covers sports for The Brownsville Herald. You can reach him via email at [email protected]. On Twitter he’s @HessRgehess