Sunday, October 6, 2013

By Cory K. Doviak
NJS.com Editorial Director

Zach Gillespie steered in a rebound to put Indian Hills in front and the Braves went on to post their second win of the season, 2-1, in Old Tappan on Saturday afternoon.

OLD TAPPAN – The Bergen County Boys Soccer Tournament is tough to gain entry to. The automatic number is a .650 winning percentage and a team must be at least a game above .500 to even be considered. There will be a lot of good teams on the outside looking in after the tournament is selected and seeded on Monday night, but even without a bid this is not the time for those teams to give up on the season. Maybe season-long goals will have to be adjusted, but this is no time to call it quits.

Indian Hills and Northern Valley/Old Tappan are two of those teams. Both are trying to hang in there on the fringes of the race for a league title and both are hoping to get some momentum going in a bid to qualify for the state tournament. Judging by the physical nature of Saturday's game, neither team is ready to pack it in yet.

Leading by a goal at the half, Indian Hills got what looked like an insurance goal midway through the second half. But in tune with the kind of season it has been for the the Braves, a win was not going to come easy. Old Tappan answered Indian Hills' second goal within two minutes of when it was scored, forced the Braves to white- knuckle it all the way home on the way to the 2-1 victory, their second of the season.

William Sohn scored the goal that got Old Tappan to within 2-1.

“We've been in in just about all of our games and a lot of one-goal decisions have gone against us, so it was nice to finally have one break our way. These guys have hung in there and they played great today,” said Indian Hills head coach Steve Every. “We are not after moral victories. We are trying to play good soccer, but this game can be cruel sometimes. We've played great and lost and other times you can get by on a lucky bounce or two, but we are trying to play consistent soccer and give these guys the belief that we can compete every time out.”

Indian Hills (2-5) was up against an opponent also trying to rally its remaining troops for a run at the postseason. Every team has injuries, but Old Tappan has been especially hard with two players out for the season with torn knee ligaments and three others out for the duration with hip fractures. The Knights' depth has obviously been affected.

“We are not trying to make any excuses and our kids are still fighting, but it is hard because there is a whole new learning curve we are going through because we are working with our second and third options,” said Old Tappan head coach Mike Hanchar. “This might not be the group that we expected to go to battle with, but this is what we have and we have to continue to get better. We have to try to fix our problems because we still have a lot play for.”

Andrew Backman scored the goal that gave Indian Hills a 2-0 lead.

Both teams were playing for a chance to creep back closer to .500 and Indian Hills got on the board first with a good bounce off the framework. In the 16th minute, Scott Halper cutin in from the right sideline and split two defenders before ringing a shot off the right post. The goal denied turned into a goal scored when Zach Gillespie put home the rebound to give the Braves the 1-0 lead.

“I was open and I was calling for the ball, but Scott took a good shot and I followed it. I was lucky enough to be in the right place when it came off the post. I calmly put it in the net,” said Gillespie. “We've had a tough schedule, but I think the way it is going now we are going to be able to put some wins together. It's not like Old Tappan is a bad team, they won the counties two years ago, so this is a good win for us and hopefully it puts us on a little bit of a roll.”

Old Tappan had a goal disallowed in the 24th minute when John O'Reilly redirected a William Sohn shot inside the left post with his head, but was ruled to have been in an offside position at contact. The Knights other quality chance in the opening half came in 38th minute when Louis Ascolese and Jae Cho worked a quick 1-2 in the midfield that got Ascolese in a step ahead, but Indian Hills defender Alex Tulp caught the play from behind and got sufficiently involved to throw off the timing to keep the Braves ahead, 1-0, at the break.

Joey Lee assisted on Old Tappan's lone goal.

The first 15 minutes or so of the second half were played with aggression from both sides, but mostly in the middle third with few ways through. That chanced with just over 23 minutes left in regulation with Andrew Backman providing Indian Hills with a two-goal cushion that would turn out to be short-lived.

“I was just running down middle playing left mid for the first time. I saw Patrick Praszck running down the line and he made a nice move and passed it through the middle,” said Backman. “It came to me when I was open and I just slotted it open corner.”

Less than two minutes later, Old Tappan's Joey Lee set up Sohn for a run up the middle and he followed the line straight through. Sohn side-stepped a defender and then ripped a shot from close range to get the Knights back to within 2-1 with still more than 21 minutes to play. Indian Hills had plenty of chances to stretch its lead back out, but Scott Halper was left unlucky twice on the same sequence. His volley off a free kick collided flush with the crossbar and then his header off the scramble of the rebound finished just left of the near post.

Indian Hills also did a nice piece of work when Dan Turton fed a ball through to John Murphy, who chipped the defense to send in Halper, who just missed again, this time wide right with just over 13 minutes to play. Braves keeper Kevin Brennan handled Old Tappan's last bit of dangerous business when he went low to rob Sohn, who had worked his way in from the right.

Only bad luck kept a variety of shots from Indian Hills' Scott Halper out of the goal.

Now at 2-5 on the season, Indian Hills can see a way through to the state playoffs. It happened last year when the power points available to them through their rough schedule were enough to get the Braves in and they gave Ramapo, their sister school and eventual Group 3 state co-champion a rough go in the opening round.

“Our league is so tough and we play a lot of close games and we can pick up [power] points that way. Last year we got in ahead of some teams that had more wins then us because of that and we played Ramapo in a game that was a one-goal game until there were five or 10 minutes left,” said Every. “We are there, we are competing and today we were rewarded with a result. Hopefully that continues.”

Old Tappan is now 3-6 overall, but 2-2 inside league play and not dead yet.

“We need to win some games to get closer to .500. There is no doubt about that, but looking at the power points right now there are a lot of teams right around us,” said Hanchar. “In our league there are a lot of teams that are similar to us also with the likes of Demarest and Teaneck and we are all fighting for the same thing.”

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