Clinton Edges Sparta in Absolute Thriller, 3-2 in Double Overtime

Written by:  Kerry Haselton

The stunning parallels between Team Pepto’s postseason run and Team USA’s run up to the World Cup final continued last night, with late game drama as the sun sank below the treeline at Foran.  In the end, just before the game was decided by kicks from the mark, United scored a brilliant golden goal to silence Sparta’s coach and send them back to their own cornfields.  It was a wonderful game, and it went like this…

Meags, Erin, Kara & Super LJ in goal

For the second straight game, United players answered the call and got their butts to the field in record numbers.  Everyone confessed to heavy cases of butterflies before kickoff.  Although we beat Sparta 4-1 just 2 games ago, we all knew that they were among the best teams we faced.  After working so hard to come in second in the regular season, it is very hard luck to draw Sparta in the first round.  They had trouble generating results this season, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t good.  They also had one or two players with them last night that were missing last time we played- most notably #21, a friend of Maryanne’s who is a really great player.  Just looking at her gave me a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach. But they lack one thing we have- a goalkeeper.  Their’s is injured, and we had two last night- LJ and Mary.

Aunt Krissy looking to make the perfect corner kick

The first half featured a lot of crisp passing and some very fast attacking play.  Unfortunately, the vast majority of it was played by Sparta.  Led by Krissy and bolstered by a strong showing from LJ, we defended well.  Sparta was playing a system we had not seen before- using a decoy.  No, they did not use fake ducks to try to lure real ducks to their deaths- they used a player in the offside position to try to lure our mids and defenders into complacency and run very fast players in around her and make us fail to track them.  Krissy explained it all to us, and we learned on the job.  Kelly directed the mids.  We hung together.  Lindsay made some good slide tackles.  Laura Walker had a key block and clearance.  We generated some chances from our wide players, but there was a lot of defending to do.  We could not get any possession in the middle of the park.  But we gave up very few corners and that’s a good thing.  We had a few of our own as well, and we came close to scoring.   At one point, Sparta played a ball in over the top and Krissy went to cover it, and the decoy, #11, shifted over and blocked her off the ball.  The whistle blew.  Krissy was under the impression that she was being penalized for elbowing the girl, so she started to put up a fuss, but the call was against Sparta, for impeding, or offside, or both!  The Sparta coach said, “Nicely done.”  Krissy was winding up to take the free kick and she said, “What?  What can you mean by that?  Nicely done?  You want them to cheat?!?”  Good thing we don’t have a coach.  They were playing pretty much man down all the time they used this tactic.  Duh.  0-0 at the half.  We were very much in the game.

During the break, interested onlookers, well, mostly Mary, who was going to have to play goal against this team, wanted to go to a 3-4-3 or a 3-5-2.  We explained that we don’t know how to do these things.  We used to play in a 4-3-3, but we are afraid to do it when we already can’t get a touch in center midfield.  Next season, maybe we can work on these systems at practice.  Oh, right, we don’t have any practices.  We used to try to practice, but the same 5 players always showed up. So we decided to try to push Maryanne up a bit as warranted, but otherwise, just keep on working hard.  We also needed to play faster and get to more balls first.   We were doing fine, everything was good, but then #21 came down our right side, cut back onto her right foot, and she shot the ball from 25 yards, curling it in to the side netting far post.  There was nothing anyone could do about that- it was like Heather O’Reilly’s strike in group play in Germany.  We didn’t get down, we just said, well, we should try some shots from distance of our own.  Very soon after that, still within the first 10-15 minutes of the half, we got a goal.  We built from the back, I had time and passed it to Kelly, Kelly got the ball in, and Linda scored a great goal to bring us level!  We then won several corners and started to play with confidence. We had 3 good headers of the ball framing the box on these corners (Maryanne, EJ, and Jen).  An embarrassment of riches.  But wait, there’s more.   Maryann scored after the ball had popped out to her after a free kick or a corner.  Wow, we were winning.  

Linda coming in for the kill

We kept attacking, despite injuries to two of our speedy forwards- Lisa (ankle) and Linda (mild concussion- she still knew what day of the week it was on her second guess!)  Mary came up with some big saves under pressure, including one where #11 could have jumped over her but choose instead to kick her in the gut while she was down.  The refs did not look kindly on that.   Linda’s injury had caused the refs to add a little time to the second half, but we were seconds from the whistle when Sparta was playing a corner and the shot looked well struck and net-bound from the sideline when we all wondered- How did that shot go wide?  It had hit EJ’s hand and deflected out of play.  Scott did blow the whistle, we thought the game had ended, but he was pointing to the SPOT!  Mary made that kicker wait, she played all the mind games she could play, but the shot was good.  2-2.  End of regulation.  I yelled SUB, because I thought with the rapidly waning light we would go direct to pk’s  But the refs wanted to squeeze in the 2 overtime periods of 5 minutes, golden goal.  I felt good about our chances in pks, and we all know how fast those 5 minute periods go by,- so we needed to have our kickers out there, including the aforementioned, mildly-concussed Linder Feldman.  What a trooper.

Both teams went after the goal.  Nothing happened in the first period, so we switched ends.  The sun disappeared and the clock ticked inexorably down.  We won two free kicks.   Krissy was playing with a huge knee and a dead leg, but she sent them in- and HEATHER pulled an Abby Wambach and she scored a goal just seconds from the end of the game!!!!  We swarmed onto the field, Scott temporarily thought he was at World Cup and he said No Golden Goal!  Then he said, “Wait- YES, golden goal!”  And we WON and we advance to the Semis- and        WE DON’T HAVE TO PLAY RANDOLPH!  Basking Ridge got through and now we play them at 9 am Sunday at Foran.  Let’s win and go to the final for the 5th year in 6! 

Let’s GO United!

Squad- LJ, Mary, Kerry, Krissy, Angel, Lindsay, Kara, Kelly, Hines-y, Harv, EJ, Lisa, Jen, Linda, Laura, Erin, Heather, Jo, Amy, DJ, Meags, Maryanne.  Thanks also to all of our fans!