ROXBURY — Two different heartbreaks from last season fueled motivation for the Boston International boys soccer team: An overtime loss in the Boston City League championship, and a loss in the Div. 5 state semifinals.
Saturday afternoon, the Div. 5 power rankings’ top-ranked Lions (11-2-3) avenged one of them after beating Dearborn, 2-0, in the City Championship at Madison Park.
Junior Jerry Registe scored both goals for Boston International, which authored a physical and scrappy defensive effort to edge out Dearborn in a tense, chippy match.
“It feels amazing,” said Lions head coach Edmar Varela. “We just aimed as high as possible. There’s no other team that deserves this more than us. … It feels good to finally get a trophy for the school this year.”
Teams traded pressure through most of the first half to almost no avail, each producing just two shots on goal as defenses kept dangers to the outside. Speed from both teams’ top lines was met with physicality, keeping those shots to a minimum. Set pieces led to a lot of shots just too high or wide, building up plenty of anticipation for the game’s first goal.
It came in the 39th minute, as Registe kicked a low line drive at the net that Dearborn’s Jose Maria Alves Gomes (three saves) got in front of. The ball drove through his attempted catch, and trickled in for a 1-0 lead.
“(Registe) brought a lot today,” Varela said. “It feels like it’s us against the world, in a way. There was a lot of complaints from other coaches about some of our guys on the team. But we were able to get the job done. He definitely stepped up today. On a day like today, it was meant to happen.”
Dearborn seemed to tie the game soon after, but a goal was waved off with an offsides ruling.
Tensions rose tremendously from there, and Dearborn came out firing in the second half with waves of heavy pressure. Lions keeper Jeffrey Louis (five saves) stopped two shots in the opening five minutes, but Boston international struggled to keep the ball out of its side of the field with how resiliently Dearborn attacked over a 19-minute span.
Sophomore center-back Steevenson Chanson was instrumental in helping the Lions hold off the charge, and it wasn’t too long after that Registe added his second goal for a 2-0 lead in the 59th minute.
“One of the team captains is actually (Chanson),” Varela said. “I purposefully have him as a captain because he is kind of like one of the hearts of the team. He’s in the back, he organizes it, he tries to keep the guys calm. So, he’s really a leader back there.”