Old Tappan freshman Lee Ramos (25) nudging home the game's lone goal in a 1-0 win over Mount Olive in the opening round of the North 1, Group 3 state sectional tournament.
OLD TAPPAN – Freshman year for any high school student can be and usually is a roller coaster. Adjusting to new surroundings, new responsibilities, new people and for athletes, a new level of play, can lead to some ups and downs.
Lee Ramos is a freshman soccer player at Northern Valley/Old Tappan and she had “one of those days” on Monday, the same day as her first ever state playoff game. She spent most of the morning looking for her soccer jersey, which never turned up and she spent most of the opening round game against Mount Olive on the bench in an over-sized #25 shirt.
“Morning of the game, this morning, I was searching everywhere and I just couldn’t find it. I still have no idea where it is,” said Ramos, one of two freshman that have contributed to what is shaping up as Old Tappan’s best ever girls soccer seasons. “I usually wear No. 9 and it is a size medium. This No. 25 is an XL, maybe a double X.”
The missing wardrobe was the descent of the roller coaster ride; the ascent came about 10 seconds after Ramos checked into the game for the first time. Her first action was to get herself involved in a pile up in front of the next where a couple of her teammates and Mount Olive goalie Alexa Smith were all vying for a touch on Nicole Klapowitz’s service.
It was Ramos that won the race and, with her first touch of the game, she popped in the game’s lone goal, a scrappy 68th minute tally that stood up in Old Tappan’s 1-0 victory that sends the fifth-seeded Golden Knights into the North 1, Group 3 state sectional quarterfinals where they will play No. 4 Northern Highlands, a 5-0 winner over Bergenfield.
“I planned that perfectly,” said Old Tappan head coach Maia Levenshus, who obviously could not have planned to put a freshman in the game and have her score the game-winner about 10 seconds later. “But Lee has been playing significant minutes all year. She’s dealt with some injuries, but I know for a fact that any time I put her in and for however long she is in there, she is going to go 1000 percent.”
Senior Nicole Klapowitz assisted on Old Tappan's goal.
Early on it did not look like Old Tappan was going to need any late game heroics. The Knights dominated the first 10 minutes, had multiple scoring chances and nearly went in front just seven-and-a-half minutes into the game. Klapowitz hit an in-swinging corner kick that Smith got her gloves on, but the ball sped through and was on its way in before Anna Cafone headed the ball off the goal line,
Once Mount Olive survived the early barrage, it settled in and for the next 40 minutes or so the game was played mostly between the 20s. Neither keeper, Smith or Old Tappan’s Eva Saric, was particularly trouble over the last half hour of the first half or the first 10 or so of the second.
Over that stretch, Old Tappan was relying on its defense.
“We like to think of our defense as a brick wall. We just want to hold strong, keep feeding the balls to the forwards. We stayed strong and held our own until LeeLee [Ramos] could finish,” said NVOT senior back Tea Kisala. “We work with each other well; we all communicate well because we are all friends on and off the field.”
Junior Taylor Chisolm has lived on both ends of the pitch. A former striker now patrolling the back middle of the field, it was Chisolm who had two quality second half chances, the most dangerous came after a long stretch of possession in with the Knights had Mount Olive chasing in their back third. Thirteen minutes into the second half, Chisolm walked up on a rolling ball near the top of the box and first-timed a shot on frame.
Taylor Chisholm and the NVOT defense kept a clean sheet heading into a quarterfinal matchup against Northern Highlands.
Smith was able to pick it out from beneath the crossbar, but that foray gave Old Tappan its swagger back and it spent most of the last 20 minutes on Mount Olive’s side of the field. The Marauders did have a few chances of their own, the best of which came in the 65th minute with the game still scoreless. That was when Angelina Ferrante ran on to a well-weighted diagonal pass and got her hips turned in time to put a shot on target.
Saric closed down her left post to make the save and two-and-a-half minutes later Ramos, her No. 25 jersey flapping in the breeze, was first to and gave Old Tappan the only goal it needed to advance to Thursday’s quarterfinal round.
North 1, Group 3 is always one of the state’s toughest as it is inhabited by both Ramapo, this year's No. 1 seed, and Northern Highlands, probably the state’s most successful girls soccer program on the 2000s. And that is just the top half of the bracket.
Old Tappan beat Northern Highlands in the Bergen County Tournament quarterfinals this season to make the semifinals for just the second time in school history. The Knights are in the midst of one of the best seasons in school history and they feel like they belong.
“We have been playing together for a long time. Some of these girls have been doing it since they were like 5 years old. Our team has that chemistry and that is something that you don’t find in a lot of other places. That works a lot to our advantage,” said Chisolm, who played as a freshman on the NVOT team that won the program’s first ever state sectional title in 2022. “We are hoping to repeat what happened my freshman year. We want to get back and prove we are on that level.”
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