Doral Academy’s Carlos Zambrano is Miami-Dade Boys’ Soccer Player of the Year for 7A-5A

There was a little bit of wistfulness for Carlos Zambrano while he watched his friends on the Doral Academy boys’ soccer team make history by winning the school’s first state championship last year. Zambrano was at Doral, but didn’t play for the Firebirds as a junior, instead focusing solely on his club season and hoping to parlay it into a spot in a Major League Soccer academy.

The opportunity ultimately fell through and Zambrano was back at Doral for one more year, and he wanted to make it count. For the first time, he joined the Firebirds’ varsity team and set his sights on finishing high school with a state championship.

He did that and more. As a senior, he stepped right into Doral’s loaded roster and led them to a second straight state title. It’s why he’s also the Miami Herald’s Miami-Dade County Boys’ Soccer Player of the Year for Classes 7A-5A.

“It was very challenging for me,” Zambrano said. “There’s a lot of good players on the team, but I knew a lot of the players, I played against a lot of the players and I’m friends with almost all of them, so there was a lot of chemistry.”

The attacking midfielder led the Firebirds with 14 goals and added six assists. In the Class 6A semifinals, he helped set up the game-winning goal with a nifty dribbling play to send Doral back to the state title game.

Although he was new to the Firebirds, Zambrano was familiar with their structure because he played with many of his teammates at Doral Soccer Club. He also played on the junior-varsity team when he was a sophomore, so he had some experience within the Firebirds’ system.

The decision not to play as a junior was a difficult one, Zambrano said. He was born in Venezuela — his grandfather was the former captain of the national team — and came to the United States when he was 10. He didn’t speak any English, and would work late into the night with his mother to translate books and homework to make sure he didn’t fall behind in school. Zambrano said he didn’t feel totally comfortable speaking English until he was about 13 and it was a few more years until he really felt he had full understanding of the language.

A chance to play in an MLS academy was too difficult to pass up, especially given the challenges of his childhood, and he “had a very good chance of making one,” Zambrano said, so his club coach urged him not to play for Doral as a junior.

The MLS chance never materialized, though, and he returned to the Firebirds as a senior to make even more history in Doral.

“It was whatever,” he said. “I couldn’t play, but this year we won it back to back.”

This story was originally published April 6, 2022 at 10:30 AM.