Most soccer teams would be happy to advance to the semifinals of the biggest high school tournament in the country in just its second year of existence.

Not Metea Valley. The Mustangs were disappointed by losing 2-1 in double overtime to host Lyons in the Pepsi Showdown semifinals Saturday in Western Springs. That’s an indication of how far Metea has come in a short amount of time.

“It is. We’ve set a high expectation for them,” Metea Valley coach Josh Robinson said. “I think they set a high expectation for themselves. I think we thought with this group of kids we would be successful right away and it’s not going to be a four-, five- or six-year project.

“They’re an extremely talented group of kids and it’s up to them. The sky is the limit if they play to their potential and today I think we did. Things didn’t bounce the way we wanted it to, but I think there’s still a lot of room for improvement.”

Third-seeded Lyons (5-2-2), which will take on top-seeded Libertyville (9-1) in Sunday’s title game at Toyota Park, had its hands full throughout the match with the determined Mustangs (4-2-2), who were seeded eighth in the 32-team field.

The Lions, who qualified for the championship match for the second time in three years and third overall, controlled the action in the early going and grabbed a 1-0 lead on a goal by Elliot Borge with 27 minutes, 1 second left in the first half.

But Jake Goehring got the equalizer for Metea at the 22:36 mark of the second half when he ran onto a perfect through ball from Zach Bavol and finished from just outside the left post.

After that it was a back-and-forth struggle, which Metea nearly won when Kevin Decker’s shot from a severe angle along the left baseline sailed inches over the crossbar with 6:56 left in the second overtime.

After that Lyons took control, but the favorites had a tough time getting anything past Mustangs goalie Derek Carothers, who made three saves in the second half and four more in the extra sessions.

Carothers kept Metea alive with some outstanding stops, none better than his leaping effort that deflected over the bar a hard one-timer from 18 yards out by Mark Pawula, who couldn’t believe he didn’t score on the play.

“After that shot I was really pissed off,” Pawula said. “I just took my anger out and I decided to score on the next play.”

Unfortunately, for the Mustangs, he did. On the ensuing corner kick, Metea defender Evan Cudone knocked one shot off the line and Carothers stopped the rebound before Pawula blasted home a third attempt from six yards out to win the game with 1:54 remaining.

“When you get that twice you’re just thinking it’s going to pop out, but they finished it off so good for them,” Robinson said. “They’re a good team. It was an exciting game and hopefully everybody enjoyed themselves.”

Certainly fans of great goalkeeping enjoyed the performance by Carothers, especially the stop on Pawula.

“It was not necessarily the best save I’ve had,” Carothers said. “It’s just when the momentum is going you just have times where you make those saves. You’re in the game, you have time and then you go up and you make sure you and the ball meet at the same time.”

Robinson couldn’t have been happier with the play of Carothers, who typically plays the second half of games after Gabe Gongora, who made two saves in this one, tends net in the first half.

“He’s been playing great. He played a fantastic game, great save,” Robinson said. “We played some really good soccer today. It went both ways. They would have maybe 20 minutes of it, we’d have 20 minutes of it, they’d have 15, we’d have 15.

“Their size is a huge asset to what they do. You give up 12, 13 corners like we did, eventually their size is going to [prevail]. They scored off a throw-in, they score off a corner.”

Despite the loss, the Mustangs will get to play at Toyota Park on Sunday, facing Oak Park (7-1-1) in a 10:30 a.m. consolation match.

“It’s exciting to go play at Toyota Park,” Robinson said. “It’s not the game I wanted to play in, but it’s a great little experience for us. Hopefully, we respond well tomorrow.

“It was a goal to get to this final, not the goal, so we have a couple more weeks to work on things. We hope to be peaking then more than now. I’d rather be peaking in 2-3 weeks than now.”