Diablo FC U15 Finish Group Play Perfect

Our soccer dad correspondent in Boise, Idaho, checked in with a fresh and exciting result from Wednesday’s game:

The Diablo Futbol Club 95 U15 boys soccer team knocked off the top-rated team in the country, Surf Academy of San Diego, by a score of 3-2 in the Far West Regionals.

Next up for the hot Concord team will be Neusport 96 Green of Las Vegas on Friday.

One of the club's players, Mikey Guerrero, who goes to De La Salle, is from Clayton.

The full tale of the Surf Academy game is below in the dispatch from soccer dad Jay Bedecarre:

Diablo FC 95 fell behind in the first minute of their game today to the nation’s number one Under 15 boys soccer team, Surf Academy of San Diego, during the USYSA Far West Regionals in Boise, Idaho. Then after battling back to tie the game the local team was scored upon almost immediately and trailed 2-1 at halftime before rallying for a thrilling 3-2 victory that made them the only one of 16 U15 boys teams in the regionals to win all three of their group play games.

The second half of today’s game was extremely physical but Izzy Murguia scored a pair of goals off a series of slick passes, which gave Diablo FC the 3-2 win and first place in Flight A. Both Surf and Diablo FC already had qualified for Friday’s quarterfinals but each played as if their tournament life was at stake. Coach John Badger’s Diablo FC team opened its scoring slate on a goal by TJ Hogan off an amazing chip from Javier Valencia  and then tied the game again in the second half when Hogan intercepted an errant Surf throw in and headed it to Esteban Berumen, who played Murguia on before he buried the tying goal. Midway through the second half Mikey Guerrero passed to Berumen who challenged the Surf goalkeeper before feeding Murguia to put in the go-ahead goal.

Diablo FC keeper Andrew Konstantino had to weather several onslaughts from Surf Academy to keep his team in the game and then secure the  victory.

The Nevada state champions, Neusport 96 Green of Las Vegas, will meet Diablo FC 95 in a quarterfinal match at 11 a.m. Pacific time Friday. The semi-finals are Saturday and championship games Sunday in Boise. Regional champs advance to the USYSA National Championships July 26-31 in Phoenix.

 The Concord-based team has finished second in the CYSA North State Cup for three successive years and got into the regionals this season as a wild card team. Ironically, the team which has beaten them in those three State Cup championship games, Santa Clara Sporting, was eliminated today before the Regional quarterfinals. The remaining seven teams in the quarterfinals besides Diablo FC hail from Colorado and Southern California (two teams each), Utah, Arizona and Nevada. Teams from Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Alaska, New Mexico and Hawaii have been eliminated.

Diablo FC 95 features a roster with players from 11 area high schools including Ygnacio Valley, De La Salle and Clayton Valley and 10 cities including Concord. The area’s premier competitive youth soccer club, Diablo FC has had 16 teams reach the USYSA Regionals in the past 18 years, including Diablo FC 90, which won the boys U17 Regionals in 2008 and went on to the USYSA Final Four. DVSC Nightmare was a two-time regional girls finalist as well.

For more information on the regionals, visit http://championships.usyouthsoccer.org/regionIV/ or the Diablo FC website www.diablofc.org.