Boca Raton represents District 23 and Pine Crest District 24.  Pine Crest’s march to the playoffs took an unusual path late in the season as they managed to turn on their game in District after losing their last four regular season games to Cypress Bay, Pope John Paul, Spanish River and Saint Andrew’s.  In the first round of District they took down Calvary Christian 15-14, a much closer score than the regular season matchup and followed that up with an 8-7 win in the finals over Stoneman Douglas, similar to their regular season meeting.  You could say they’ve been living on the edge. On the other hand, Boca Raton comes into the playoffs with a load of confidence, having defeated Pope John Paul and Saint Andrew’s to earn their way into the brackets.  Boca has risen as high as #2 in our Media Poll this year and should be considered the prohibitive favorite going into this game. I have seen both these teams this season – Pine Crest twice and Boca 5 times.  It’s fair to say that PC came into the season under first-year Head Coach George Harris with a lot of question marks, having graduated three top players in Michael Diener, Sam Talkow and Harris Stolzenberg and Coach Harris was facing a rebuilding effort with a very young squad, led by some nice talent in Zach Smith, David Tescher and Cody Shamon, with a couple of younger players looking to make their mark.  Coach Harris has managed to coax a District title out of this group, going 10-7 so far this season. They did manage to score a significant win over Vero Beach on the road, which was then followed by the losing streak, so it’s fair to say that Pine Crest has probably gotten as far as they could expect. Boca Raton, on the other hand, has one of the best resumes in the state, having defeated Ponte Vedra, SA twice, Pope, St. Thomas and Columbus Catholic.  The two teams met earlier this year and Boca prevailed 14-7.  Boca is led by a veteran group of defenders and excellent talent on attack and in the midfield.  An injury to their leading faceoff specialist will hurt going forward but they still defeated SA while losing 16 of 19. Boca Raton should have no problem in winning this game and advancing to the winner of the Oxbridge-Wellington game in the second round.