With the soft touch of his foot, Archbishop McCarthy senior Mario Pedraza carefully directs a soccer ball into an empty space in his opponents' backfield. It is intended to create what he and teammate Carlos Ochoa do better than any duo in Miami-Dade or Broward counties: score goals.
"Cojelo Carlos!," Pedraza shouts in Spanish at his teammate, a fellow Columbian he's known since both were in elementary school. "Let's go!''
Mario Pedraza (10) has found the net 21 times this season and also often finds good friend Carlos Ochoa for a goal.
With one quick swoop with his left foot, Ochoa corrals the high-arching pass about 30 yards from the goalkeeper's box, then turns and heads up field. As Pedraza races into the box, Ochoa junior quickly dribbles his way past two North Broward Prep defenders and uses his right foot to fire a shot on goal.
Unfortunately for Pedraza and Ochoa, this isn't going to be their day.
North Broward Prep, one of the top Class 3A squads in the state, is simply more talented. And on this Wednesday afternoon, Eagles backup goalie Humberto Bringas wasn’t going to let anything get past him in the final regular season game for both teams.
Final score: North Broward Prep 1, Archbishop McCarthy 0.
As the teams shake hands, Bringas walks off the field pounding his chest because he knows what he has done has rarely been achieved this season in Broward County.
"I just shut out the two leading scorers in the county," Bringas says to his teammates as he walks off following the match. "That made my season."
Despite the loss, McCarthy has not enjoyed many seasons like this one.
And Pedraza and Ochoa have as much to do with that as anyone. Ochoa, a 5-9 junior forward, is the leading goal scorer and overall scorer in South Florida with 32 goals and 16 assists in 19 games. Pedraza, a 6-2 senior midfielder, is right behind him. He has scored 21 goals and dished out 19 assists -- most of them to his best friend, who has played with him on the elite Weston Fury club team since they were 9.
The Fury has made it to the semifinal round of State Cup with Pedraza and Ochoa each of the past two years. But winning big matches and having two players lead the county in scoring is something new at McCarthy, a private Catholic school in Southwest Ranches founded in 1998.
The Mavericks (14-3-3) are headed into this week’s District 15-4A tournament at Hallandale High as the top-seed with a great shot at winning the school’s first division crown. McCarthy will play the winner of Pembroke Pines Charter and Fort Lauderdale in the semifinals Wednesday at 5 p.m.
Carlos Ochoa is the leading scorer in all of South Florida with 32 goals and 16 assists.
"This is a baseball school," Ochoa said. "Soccer has never been a big sport here. When I got here, we didn't have our own practice field. We used the football field, which was all beat up from football practice. Now, we have our own practice field, which [soccer] coach [Henry] Pedraza built us. Little by little, you see soccer growing."
Ochoa and Pedraza, whose father has coached the varsity for the past two seasons, hope they can speed up the growth in the coming weeks.
The Mavericks, unranked among the Top 10 teams by The Miami Herald in Dade and Broward, have only lost to elite teams -- 10th-ranked Pine Crest, No. 7 American Heritage and No. 5 North Broward Prep. The good news? All three of those teams are in Class 3A.
The Mavericks are in Class 4A -- where they've already beaten district rival Pembroke Pines Charter 3-0 and played to a scoreless tie against reigning district champion Cardinal Gibbons, which lost to last year's eventual state champion Merritt Island 1-0 in the regional final.
"Last year, we were close, yet so far," Ochoa said. "This year, we have just one senior -- Mario -- and we work together to help the team. He's the playmaker and I'm the finisher."
The role of playmaker is something new for Pedraza. On the Fury, he has always played on defense. But after his father took over the program at McCarthy last year, Pedraza moved to the midfield where he began learning how to create scoring chances.
"Mario has never been a forceful player," Henry Pedraza said. "He's always known how to put touch on his passes and connect with teammates. He still loves to play defense. But in this role, we get to use both of his talents."
The move has been a blessing for Ochoa, who scored 20 goals last season but was often frustrated by the lack of help he received from the midfield.
"Carlos has always been a good finisher," Mario Pedraza said. "But he's needed a little more help.
"The good thing is we're friends. Even though we argue like boyfriend and girlfriend at times and he's always screaming at me and I'm always screaming at him, at the end of the day we're fine."
Comments: