![\"\"](\"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/21-1024x732.jpg\")
Florida defender Chad Vandegriffe battles Utica’s Bo Jelavic for a ball during the Tropics 7-1 win in Major Arena Soccer League action Sunday in Utica, N.Y<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/li> ![\"\"](\"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/63-scaled.jpg\")
Florida Tropics defender Chad Vandegriffe goes high for this ball during a Major Arena Soccer League game Sunday afternoon in Utica, N.Y. The Tropics won, 7-1.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/li><\/ul><\/figure>\n\n\n\n The Tropics played in Baltimore Saturday night, winning 6-4, in a game that did not end until well after 9 p.m. It was the home and season openers for the Blast and Utica City, with both teams drawing near sell-out crowds to their respective arenas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
No matter to the Tropics \u2013 Florida was in control from start to finish– who improved to 2-0, and jumped to an early lead in the Eastern Division with six points. They will be idle next weekend, and open the home portion of their 24-game regular season on Saturday, Dec. 18 against the Ontario Fury. Kickoff at the RP Funding Center will be at 5:05 p.m.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With Saturday\u2019s win in Baltimore, Florida is a perfect 6-0 in season opening games, and are currently 5-0 in home openers swince joining the MASL.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI couldn\u2019t be prouder of our effort and heart this afternoon,\u201d Florida Coach Clay Roberts said. \u201cWe\u2019ve known since the start of camp this was going to be a grueling weekend, and every single person in the lineup the last two nights stepped forward with maximum effort and superior team play. Hopefully it\u2019s a great springboard for things to come.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Florida led 4-1 at the half, and held Utica off the scoresheet over the final two quarters of play. Silva was sensational in goal, facing 32 shots today after seeing 40 in Baltimore on Saturday. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cHugo couldn\u2019t have played much better,\u201d Roberts added. \u201cAnd of course he got lots of help with all five guys consistently getting back behind the ball, and making calm, composed, skillful breakouts when the ball was turned over. An all around great weekend.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Defender Rafa Alves got a pair of goals, along with single scores from Zach Reget (four goals for the weekend), VcMor Eligwe, Ricardinho Sobreira and Joshio Sandoval, and of course Silva, who now has five career goals. This was his second since joining the Tropics for the 2018-19 season.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Season tickets for all 12 Florida home games which guarantee the best seats in the house are now on sale by calling 863-240-0101. Each family season ticket account includes a parking pass this season.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In addition, the \u201cTropics Blitz\u201d will provide free general admission tickets to many of the 200 level seats at the RP Funding Center for the entire 2021-22 season thanks to the team\u2019s sponsor as a thank-you for five years of support, and as a way of providing a great evening of family entertainment for parents and kids who have had their activities curtailed because of the ongoing pandemic. Vehicles with two or more persons will pay $20 to park, and then be able to take their parking receipt to the RP Funding Center box office for the same number of free tickets to that day\u2019s game as occupants in the vehicle. Single occupant vehicles will pay just $10 for parking. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
For more information, visit www.fltropics.com.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Photo Credit: Courtesy Utica City FC \/ MASL<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Despite not arriving in Utica until 2 a.m. Sunday morning, the Florida Tropics dominated Utica City FC Sunday afternoon in Utica, rolling to a stunning 7-1 win to complete a… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17863,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"{title}\n\n{excerpt}\n\n{url}","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","default_image_id":71799,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[35],"tags":[1882],"class_list":["post-17861","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-florida-tropics-sc","tag-despite-travel-disadvantage-tropics-stun-utica-city-7-1-as-even-gk-hugo-silva-scores-a-goal"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17861","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17861"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17861\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17863"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17861"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17861"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17861"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}