Tuesday,
November 3, 2015
By Cory K. Doviak
NJS.com Editorial Director
|
Jazzin Clark's move up helped Old Tappan got from a scoreless first half to a 7-1 win over Cliffside Park in the first round of the North 1, Group 3 state sectional playoffs on Monday afternoon.. |
OLD TAPPAN – Although it had a pretty sizable advantage in terms of possession through the first half of Monday’s North 1, Group 3 state sectional tournament opener against Cliffside Park, Northern Valley/Old Tappan had nothing on the scoreboard to show for its efforts. The Golden Knights were winning balls in the midfield and dealing with Cliffside’s counterattacking style effectively, but where it counts, in the final third, Old Tappan had drawn a blank. The game was scoreless through 40 minutes and a tweak in formation was on the agenda in the halftime huddle.
The idea was to move Jazzin Clark, the steady senior midfielder, up the pitch a little bit and it did not come from the expected source.
“Kelsey [McLaughlin] suggested it. She is one of my four year starters and she thought it would be a good idea to move [Clark] up,” said Old Tappan head coach Tom Quinn. “Sometimes the kids are smarter than the coach and I don’t mind saying that. When your captain speaks, you have to think about it and it turned out to be the right decision.”
Here is how it sounded from McLaughlin’s perspective: “We were really struggling to score in the first half. Actually we were struggling to do a lot of things. We weren’t keeping the ball that well either,” said McLaughlin. “Jazzin is a key part to our midfield, but she is also a great scorer. She works give and goes up top, she gets other girls involved and really gets things going.”
|
Nina Gonzalez played well in the Cliffside net before leaving with an injury 10 minutes into the second half. |
With Clark providing a physical presence and timely distribution against a tiring Cliffside Park defense, the Knights’ other attackers found some extra room to maneuver and once the first goal went in more quickly followed. Old Tappan scored four times in a four-minute span in which everything went right for the home team while it went in the exact opposite direction for a game Cliffside Park side that probably deserved better than finishing on the short end of a 7-1 score.
The win puts Old Tappan into Thursday’s North 1, Group 3 state sectional quarterfinal where it will host Fair Lawn, a 3-2 winner over Indian Hills. The loss ends what was a solid season for a budding Cliffside Park program that finished at 9-8.
“This has happened to us before. We are good in our league, we swept through our league, but when we go outside it, we’ve played good halves, but can’t put two together,” said Cliffside Park head coach Carmine Cambareri. “We can play with the best of them for a half, but we are a team that is young and we don’t have a lot of depth. We got tired.”
Soccer is a free flowing game and usually it is even hard to define what ‘a play’ actually is, but on this occasion that there was one play that changed everything. Old Tappan had gone from hitting hopeful balls forward in the first half to keeping it on the ground and continually probing the Cliffside defense. Amanda Tripodi hit the inside of the post with a shot just 20 seconds after the break and the only question left was when, not if, the Golden Knights would finally break through. The answer dropped with a thud in the 51st minute.
|
Amanda Tripodi scored a goal and added two assists for Old Tappan, which will play Fair Lawn in the quarterfinals. |
Tripodi once again made a hard run up the right, and then turned the corner, making a hard left into the penalty area. Cliffside’s Ephesia McCullough was in hot pursuit from behind and keeper Nina Gonzalez was fearless in charging off her line. But as Tripodi changed directions, the two Cliffside defenders were left on an uncorrectable collision course that was as bad as it looked. Gonzalez took a shot to the nose from her teammate and, just as the blood started flowing, Old Tappan freshman Taylor Newman placed the loose ball into the vacant goal to make it 1-0.
“It was a long ball up. I am not even sure who passed it to me, but I ran onto it and I knew the defender was coming. I tried to dribble around and then I saw the goalie coming out, they collided and I just hit the ball a little toward the middle,” said Tripodi, a junior striker. “Taylor was right there to kick it in.”
There was a long delay while Gonzalez was tended to and Cliffside was understandably rattled. After working so hard to stay even for 50 minutes, the Red Raiders saw their keeper helped off and a deficit on the scoreboard for the first time at the same time. Almost exactly one minute of game time later, Tripodi won the endline again and assisted on a second goal, this time after slotting a pass to Kelly Walsh, who finished to make it 2-0. Walsh added another goal in the 52nd minute and Izzy Ramil made it 4-0 with a chip from 18 yards out in the 54th.
Old Tappan went from fighting for its playoff life to getting its subs ready for some extended playing time all in matter of just over four minutes.
|
Seray Kurtis had the goal for Cliffside Park, which finished the season with a league title and a 9-8 record. |
Cliffside did get a consolation prize in the form of a state playoff goal and it was a pretty one. Asimina Pappas made a hard charge down the middle of the field, veered to the right and then steered a pass back to her left where Seray Kurtis was making a diagonal run. Kurtis took the feed, beat a defender, made the keeper make a decision and then finished to make it 4-1 with 20:55 remaining.
Old Tappan ended any remaining suspense with three more goals in the next 10 minutes. Francesa Mangano knocked in a freebie off a shanked clearance, Walsh and Julia Lee played a nice 1-2 in the midfield to set up the Tripodi goal that made it 6-1 and Lee finished the scoring herself with the game’s final goal 10:04 before time.
“I thought we showed a lot of poise. I knew this was going to be a tough game and I want to compliment Cliffside Park. They played tough,” said Quinn, whose team improved to 14-3-2 on the season. “They are a good team, there was just that avalanche at the end of the game that made the score what it was.”
In the last decade, Cliffside has grown from a brand new program to its current state, a now perennial league title contender looking to take the next step.
“There were some things that could have gone differently and given us a better chance here, but at the same time we did not play our best soccer and we have nobody to blame but ourselves,” said Cambareri. “We have to earn our respect and that is the way it is. You are not going to have it given to you until you go out and win one of those big games.”
Meanwhile, Old Tappan has another one of those big games to gear up for. And this point in the season, that is all a team can hope for.
“I am with a great group of girls and it has already been a great season. We went through the league undefeated and we just want to keep going,” said Clark, who transferred in from Demarest to play out her senior season in Old Tappan. “If we continue the way we have been going and playing as hard as we can I will be happy with any result. I love this group of girls and I want to keep playing for as long as we can.”
CLICK HERE FOR MORE PHOTOS FROM THIS GAME. TO BUY A COLLECTOR'S PRINT
OF THIS STORY, PLEASE VISIT 4FeetGrafix.com. |