Barra Brava FC Premier won, nay, persevered in their Terrill Cup Semifinal match on Sunday in the most trying of conditions at Bishop-McNamara.  According to weather.com, today’s high temperature was 99°F with a humidity of about 83%.  Let’s see, let me pull out my trusty Boy Scout’s Guide to Safe Scouting….yep, just as I thought…”Extreme Danger:  sunstroke, muscle cramps, heat exhaustion and/or heat stroke likely.”  Great.  But worry not, my friends.  We have Stephen Elliot.  And as a tribute to his Man-of-the-Match performance, I will now proceed to complete this match report in an absolutely spot-on Scottish accent.

No sane creature would be caught outside and more than 20 paces from a swimming pool on this steamy summer day.  Aye, but I’m starting to think that our Barra Brava FC players are of a different breed.  This match was a test.  A serious test.  Missing a handful of players due to injury and other commitments, we were forced to make adjustments in this do-or-die fixture.  As BBFC midfield Bobby Malek so eloquently put it, our guys were playing “musical positions” out there.  So added to the horrifically draining conditions, it perhaps can be understood that we had a rather ugly performance overall.

We did well in the first half and jumped to a 2-0 lead off of two well deserved goals from Oscar Feliu and Tony Bastiand.  Things looked to be going in our favor but I think the heat and the lead combined to give us a ill-formed excuse to sit back and play out the win, and as all US soccer fans so pleasantly recall, a 2-0 deficit is far from insurmountable.  Team Magnet played some inspired ball and got a few opportunistic  goals to draw even in the second half.

So it was on to two 10 minute overtime periods to decide a winner.  Midfielder Fabiano Belletini did a superb job frustrating defenders all day and after toying with two opposing players, he split the two with the ball and was promptly dragged to the ground as he darted past them and into the penalty box.  The referees did well to award the penalty which was then converted by the self-proclaimed “Mr. Automatic,” Fernando Sattori.  But again, we couldn’t hold the lead and the game was sent to penalty kick shootout to decide a winner after 110 minutes of grueling competition.

Enter Stephen Elliot.  The imposing Scotsman, his image distorted by a mirage of heat radiating off of the rubberized turf field, probably hadn’t seen, felt, heard, or fathomed 105+ degree temperatures during his time as a wee lad back in Edinburgh, Scotland.  But as he was cheered by a raucous and loyal crowd of sign-waving BBFC supporters known simply as “Ladies for the Adoration of John Henderson,” Stephen came up huge with four stunning saves AND a perfectly placed, side-netting penalty shot in a marathon, back-and-forth, 16 round penalty kick shootout to pull BBFC into the Finals of the Terrill Cup!

At the end of the day, those of us who didn’t succumb to heat-related illness were probably felled by cardiac arrest after the high pressure ending to the match.  Our reward is a date with Danish Dynamite of the WISL Sunday 1^st Division in the Terrill Cup final at 10:00 a.m. on Saturday, August 7^th at Bishop-McNamara HS.   This marks the first time BBFC has made it this far into the highly competitive tournament and provides an opportunity to win both our league and Cup championship.  So as you prepare for the United-Revs viewing party at Molly’s later that night, come on by and support your Barra Brava FC Premier and we look to lift our first Cup trophy!