Farmington's 5-0 Class L Victory Marks Second State Championship Win Against Avon

From the moment Farmington junior Guido Shutz scored with 17:22 left in the first half of the Class L boys soccer final against Avon, the Indians were on a roll.

Farmington's 5-0 shutout Friday marked a 10th state title win for Farmington High School and the seventh for head coach Steve Waters.

"Most of the goals were scored because we attacked them and put them in an uncomfortable position that they weren’t used to that consistently during the season," Waters said.

Avon High School assistant varsity coach Dave Zlatin has been taking the coaching lead while head coach Patrick Mulligan has been absent due to a personal matter. He said that Farmington pressed the Falcons "very hard and we didn’t react well to that."

“We didn’t play our best game. Farmington deserves full credit. They deserve to be state champs," Zlatin said. "They forced us into mistakes.”

However, considering his team graduated 10 seniors last year, he said Avon still had a lot to be proud of this season. This was Avon's second consecutive season in the final after losing 3-0 to Bunnell last November.

“I told the guys to focus more on the 20 games that got us here than the last game. It wasn’t our best effort unfortunately," Zlatin said. “To get back here is a great achievement.... I know they don’t see that yet, but I think they’ll appreciate in the long run what they did to get here.”

The Farmington players, particularly the seniors, wanted to win "more than anything," Shutz said.

“It’s a classic match-up. It couldn’t have worked out any better today," Shutz said.

The last time the two teams played an official game was 1989 when Avon won the semifinal game in penalty kicks. Avon and Farmington haven't played against each other in a state final since 1986. Farmington won that championship.

However, the teams scrimmage every August. Avon won the scrimmage 3-2 this year.

"You take a state championship game and make it that much bigger by playing a rival," Farmington junior Colin Cheesman said.

When a reporter asked Waters what made this game so different from the scrimmage, he said that the focus in the scrimmage was less on winning and more on trying out different players to see "what players could fit into that level.”

Waters and the team were ecstatic about scoring five goals.

“Getting three in the finals would be a lot. This was nice," Waters said.

Farmington keeper Jeff Crook, who earned the clean sheet, played a vital role not just in the title game, but the entire season, according to Waters.

"[Crook] has come a huge way," Waters said. "We didn’t know who we were going to have in goal the first two, three weeks of the season. We split time with a couple guys at the beginning and he kept coming along. He’s well improved over the season."

The Goals

About seven minutes after Shutz scored what became the game-winning goal for Farmington, he played Cheesman the ball and he tapped it in.

Senior Vasil Borisevich followed with another with four minutes remaining in the first half.

"Basically what happened is I saw a ball coming in, so my inital thought was, 'I'm going to try and get this across,'" Borisevich said. "Hit it on the wrong part of my foot, saw it bending towards the net and then I saw it coming into the corner and I knew the goalkeeper had the sun going against him. So I was like, 'this has a chance to go in.' Then I saw it getting closer and closer and saw it finally getting into the corner...."

It was his first goal in his first season with Farmington. He called the victory over Avon "picture perfect" and "unreal."

"I was definitely fired up to play. Every single year Farmington is getting in the finals, we're doing big things, so to bring home another title is just an amazing thing," Borisevich said.

Now he said he is looking forward to the winter basketball season and possibly bringing "some hardware back with the basketball too."

But even though the Indians were up 3-0 at halftime, Waters told them not to celebrate yet.

Farmington took that to heart up until the final buzzer. Cheesman scored his second goal of the game with slightly more than 12 minutes left off of a back heel pass from junior Thomas Fresher. Farmington senior Josh Moreno netted a fifth in the last minute.

“It’s a great feeling, not to score two goals, but to win the state championship," Cheesman said.

When asked what he'll remember most about the game, Cheesman's answer was simple.

"5-0," he said.