Comets avoid winter weather and get win in Florida

The Kansas City Comets secured their first win on the road this season and improved to a 5-3 record as they defeated the Florida Tropics over the weekend.

The Comets came out strong taking a 2-0 lead in the first with goals from Leo Gibson and Bryan Perez. Both assisted by John Sosa. The visitors added a goal from Ramone Palmer midway through the second and looked like they might take a shutout into half but the Tropics did not surrender that easily.

In what was their best play of the first half, Florida’s Ricardo Diegues and Marco Rodriguez were able to counter-attack touching the ball back and forth to set up the home teams loan goal of the first half with just 45 second left before the break.

Florida’s Victor Rojas and Kansas City’s Stefan Stokic both added goals to make it 4-2 at the end of the third.

Gibson extended the lead early in the fourth but the Tropics started to gain momentum. Diegues scored and then Victor Parreiras put one in after Florida added the sixth attacker.

The Tropics thought they had equalized with just under two minutes left when a shot came very close to going over the goal line but the referees ruled that Stephen Paterson had prevented that from happening. The Comets went the other way and the controversial decision may have led to the frustration that Anthony Arico displayed when he boarded Stokic and received a blue card.

The Comets knocked the ball around to close the game out and Perez added one more goal when they were able to beat the pressure and essentially go 3-1 on Tropics’ keeper Piotr Sliwa.

Florida drops to a 2-6 record and both teams get a little time off as the Tropics travel to face Kansas City on Dec. 30^th.