October
23, 2006
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| Tenafly keeper Ben Pearl was credited with 20 saves, but he celebrates here about one he did not make, a Bosco PK that bounced off the post and made the difference in the Tigers' win in a shootout after 100 minutes of scoreless soccer. | |
FRANKLIN LAKES – The game of soccer has a built-in equalizer. There is one player on the field that can use his hands to play the ball and Ben Pearl used his to keep his team in the game against top-seeded Don Bosco Prep in Sunday’s quarterfinal round of the Bergen County Tournament.
Bosco used its overwhelming advantage in possession to throw just about everything it had on the net, but every time the Ironmen sent the ball in, Pearl, Tenafly’s junior keeper, either caught it, kicked it or punched it away and he did it for 100 grueling minutes.
So after spending just about all of regulation and two overtimes on the defensive, Tenafly (10-5) suddenly found itself on even footing: with five uncontested shots from the penalty dot in a shootout to decide a winner.
While Pearl did not make a save in PKs, he didn’t need to. Tenafly converted all five of its shots and the fourth Bosco attempt had an unfortunate run-in with the goal post as the Tigers pulled off a stunning upset of the top seed.
Nir Amit-Fridman, Brian Samuals, Jamie Ferolie, Mark Prussin and Alon Sideman all converted their penalty kicks to get the Tigers into next weekend’s semifinals with a 1-0 (5-3 in PKs) win at Ramapo High School.
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| Dylan Renna's flick header with 5 seconds to go in the second half nearly gave Bosco the win in regulation, but it bounced off the post. |
“Ben Pearl played a giant game for us, a giant game,” said Tenafly head coach Bill Jaeger. “We were chasing the ball all over the place. Bosco is technically, just a terrific team. They made us look silly at points the way they were knocking the ball around. But we hung in there and we hung in there and when we got tired and they got through, that was when Ben was there for us. He was great back there and that is exactly what we needed.”
Bosco coach Roy Nygren saw it the same way.
“Obviously time of possession was in our favor, real estate was in our favor, shots, we had good looks, we had a crossbar and a few posts and I have to hand it to the keeper,” said Nygren. “The keeper from Tenafly did a nice job coming off his line on potential crosses, he played very large and I thought he had his hands full.”
And Pearl did have a heavy workload. To say that Don Bosco Prep dominated in every facet of the game would be doing a disservice to a Tenafly team that did not allow a goal in 100 minutes of soccer, but it would be close to the truth.
The Tigers bunched up in the back and their lone offensive opportunities came on long balls played up to senior Jamie Ferolie. If no connection was made, it was a change of possession and the ball was sent right back into Bosco’s attacking third with combinations of skilled passing.
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| Colin Flaherty was a part of the Tenafly defense that did a lot of chasing, but never had to pull a ball out of the back of the net. |
Tenafly had only one real scoring chance in the second half and that was in the 56th when Ferolie ran onto a long ball near the top of the area where he was met by two defenders and Bosco keeper Jeff Hoffman. Ferolie somehow got a toe on a shot that floated toward goal only to skip off the top of the crossbar.
Bosco had too many chances to list, but here are a few from the final 15 minutes of regulation. Lenny Young won the endline and hit a spinner that was redirected by a defender before Pearl closed it down just in time at the near post. On the ensuing corner kick, Rey Valdivia actually got in behind the defense and put the ball in the net, but he was in a step too soon as was called offside.
With seven minutes to go, Christos Agrapidis ran onto a diagonal through ball and made a nifty move to pop it up with his right foot. His next touch was a volley with his left foot that was on its way inside the far post before Pearl hauled it in. Five seconds before the first overtime, Dylan Renna’s flicked header hit the left half of the post before bouncing out of bounds.
“It was the best game I have ever played I guess,” said Pearl, who was credited with 20 saves, but his performance was even better than that number suggests. “I get as nervous as anybody in these kinds of games, but you can’t show it. To be a good goalie you have to have a good poker face and you have to go hard for every ball. I didn’t think about how many saves I was making when the game was going, I just tried to get in position and get ready for the next one.”
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| Rey Valdivia hit one four successful penalty kicks for Don Bosco Prep. |
Bosco outshot Tenafly 6-1 in the first overtime and 3-0 in the second 10-minute extra session, but it went for naught and the game headed into penalty kicks.
“This is why people love the game of soccer and at the same time why people can say, ‘God, I hate this game,” said Nygren. “People have talked about [penalty kicks] and they will continue to talk about if that is the way to decide a match, but you know going in that that is the way the rules are and you prepare for them. All of them were taken pretty well on our part.”
Actually all 8 kicks were struck confidently as neither keeper got so much as a fingertip on a single shot.
It was Fridman that set the tone for Tenafly by punching the first shot of the shootout into the lower left hand corner.
“Bosco is so calm with the ball, they don’t make any unforced mistakes. They are a great team,” said Fridman, as senior and first year starter. “Once we got to the penalties, we couldn’t let that opportunity go by. We worked so hard just to get there.”
Samuals used the middle of the net to the right of Hoffman for Tenafly’s second PK, Ferolie went low to his own left, Prussin chose the right corner and Sideman struck his into the right side for the perfect 5 for 5 that Tenafly needed to advance to next weekend’s Final 4 where they will face fourth seeded Paramus, which whacked Fair Lawn, 5-0.
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| Nir Amit-Fridman got Tenafly off to a good start by drilling the first PK of the shootout. |
“Every practice that we have had since August, the five up us have gotten together to take PKs,” said Ferolie, one of the few holdovers from last year’s Tenafly team that reached the county final before losing to Ramapo. “To get a chance to do it against the No. 1 team in the county, the top seed in the tournament on this field, it’s what every soccer player dreams about. It’s what they breathe for since they were this [knee] high. It’s unbelievable.”
So when Bosco’s fourth PK collided with the post and headed back toward the playing field and Sideman connected to close it out, Jaeger had a pretty good sense of what his team had accomplished.
“I’ve talked about this with my team and we knew that great challenges make for great moments,” said Jaeger. “In Bergen County this is a big show here right now. It’s a great forum for all the kids who play in this tournament and for right now we have a great moment to share with each other.”
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