Senior Deiondre Honomichi battled against the Watertown defender in the 2024 semifinals.
Win or go home Stevens was headed to overtime. Stevens boys’ soccer entered the playoff season with a 12-1-1 record. The boys were ranked fourth out of sixteen teams that made it to the playoffs. The season was looking strong for the boys’ soccer team as they entered the playoffs.
Head Coach Jeff Fierro has consistently been in the semifinals for the past four years; in those four years Fierro and his team has made it to the state championship two times and won the state championship title in 2022. Stevens consistently does very well in the playoffs but has never experienced a game in overtime until 2024.
The 2024 team consisted of six seniors, but two of them were goalkeepers so that means four seniors were on the pitch. This year Stevens had a bunch of young players step up. They played some big roles for our team to lead us to only lose one game and tie one game. “We put in the hard work before the season and built up our chemistry, so we know what to expect”, said junior soccer player Trenton Policky. Starting the season, our team played Yankton and O’Gorman. O’Gorman knocked us out of the playoffs last year in the semi-finals, so Stevens wanted revenge. The boys went on to defeat O’Gorman 5-0 and got the revenge they worked so hard for.
As playoffs came around Stevens was looking strong being placed 4th. They played Brookings who was ranked 13th in the first playoff match. Stevens came scoring 2 goals in the first half while Brookings had 0. Then Brooking came back and scored 3 goals on Stevens, with 10 minutes remaining and then in the 6th minute Stevens scored again tying up the game sending them into overtime for the first time in Steven’s history. Stevens remained calm and played their game where they scored in the first half of overtime to take back the lead against Brookings. In the 99th minute Stevens scored again securing the win against Brookings and their first overtime win in their playoff history.
In the second round of playoffs, Stevens played 5th ranked Watertown. Watertown knew that Stevens was an attacking minded team, so they played a 4-4-2 formation to stop Stevens authentic attack. Stevens still got by their defensive wall and got a total of 36 shots with 5 shots hitting the goal post. Compared to Watertown’s 8 shots. The boys were feeling confident going into overtime for the second time ever. Stevens dominated the game but could not put the ball in the back of the net, so it went into PKs which was exactly what Watertown wanted. Stevens ended up coming short in PKs and was eliminated from playoffs.
The 2024 Stevens team might not have made it to the state championship, but they were a team to be reckoned with. They were one of the highest scoring teams in Steven’s history even though they came up short of state championship. The 2024 team was the first team to go into overtime twice and win and take penalty shootout.