soccer ball

GEORGETOWN — Twenty-five straight wins showed the Lufkin Panthers could play with anyone in the state. The 26th one showed they were simply the best.

Omar Zamarripa scored a pair of goals on his way to winning MVP honors and the Panthers won the first soccer state championship in school history, rolling to a 3-1 win over the previously undefeated Georgetown East View Patriots at Birkelbach Field on Saturday afternoon.

“I don’t even think this has sunk in yet,” Zamarripa said while still hanging on to the MVP trophy minutes after the win. “There isn’t any other way you’d want your senior year to end. I’m just so happy we were able to pull this off.”

Lufkin also becomes the first East Texas UIL program to ever capture a state soccer title.

Two days after Zamarripa saw chance after chance bounce off the post or off the goalie’s hands in the semifinal, he made sure there would be no doubt with the state title on the line.

After a long Jake Williams throw-in deflected off Javier Patlan’s head, Zamarripa was there to gather the ball and put it in the back of the net for a 1-0 lead 13 minutes into the game.

The lead would be short lived as East View’s Lars Matthews scored off a header on a long free kick from Shawn Moynihan, tying the game at 1-1 midway through the first half.

The Panthers regained the lead with 12:31 remaining as Zamaripa sent a long free kick toward the goal that Kacy Bennett headed in to make it 2-1.

The game stayed that way until the half.

“We’d been through that exact situation last week,” Lufkin coach Russell Shaw said. “We’d gotten a lead and they came back and tied it. The boys had seen everything before we got here so they knew how to handle it.

The game stayed 2-1 through the second half, with Lufkin controlling much of the action but being unable to find some breathing room.

That’s when Zamarripa gave the Pack the final boost they needed. After Patlan had drawn plenty of attention from East View, Shaw switched Zamarripa up to the forward position.

He answered by getting a one-on-one opportunity with an East View defender. He made the Patriots pay as he beat the defender and the goalkeeper for a 3-1 advantage.

East View never recovered from that as Lufkin went on to its first multiple-goal victory since a 2-0 win over Dallas Spruce in the area round of the playoffs.

“What a team! What a team!” Shaw said. “Believe it or not, we talked about a state championship from Day 1. About halfway through the season, I thought we had a good shot at it.

“This is the pinnacle of our sport and I couldn’t be happier for this group of guys.”

The win capped off quite a run for Lufkin, which had to beat nationally-ranked Wakeland in the regional semifinals last week. That was followed by a wild 4-3 win over Wylie East, another ranked team.

After a 1-0 win over Tomball Memorial in a game it controlled throughout, the Panthers were faced with the daunting challenge of facing a 26-0-1 East View team that was playing just minutes away from its own campus. East View entered the day as the No. 28 team in the nation according to TopDrawerSoccer.com.

But with Lufkin bringing a big crowd of its own, the Panthers looked like anything but underdogs in the state championship game.

“On paper we knew we were underdogs,” Lufkin senior captain Jake Williams said. “But once we stepped on the field, we weren’t. We knew what we were capable of and we got a chance to go out there and prove it.”

By proving it, Lufkin’s soccer team claimed its first state title. It was also the athletic program’s first state championship since the Panthers football team accomplished the feat in 2001.

Previously Lufkin’s longest run into the soccer postseason was a regional semifinal appearance in 2002.

Shaw also claimed his first state championship in his 29th season as head coach.

“We’ve had lots of great teams and a lot of great players come through this program,” Shaw said while clinging to the championship trophy. “This is for them as well.

“I thought that outside of the one goal we gave up, the boys played as close to perfect as they can. They always believed in themselves. They deserve this.”

Lufkin closes out its season with a 26-2-1 record. That includes finishing on a 26-game winning streak after starting the season with two ties and a loss in the Klein Showcase.

“It’s amazing to finish it off by winning the championship,” said senior Chris Marquez, who scored the lone goal in the semifinal win. “It’s bittersweet that this is it, but what a way to go out.”