Tri-County Conference sweeps Colonial in soccer all-star games, boys score five goals in final 10:30, girls score shutout
By Al Muskewitz
Riverview Sports News
CLAYTON — Darren Huck was about 30 seconds away from walking down the sideline to ask his opposite number how he wanted to play it if their all-star soccer game ended in a tie. Overtime? PKs? Coin toss at 20 paces?
Turns out he didn’t have to have that conversation at all.
After nearly 70 minutes of close calls, the Woodstown coach’s Tri-County Conference boys soccer all-stars erupted for five goals in the final 10 and a half minutes of the match and wrecked the Colonial Conference stars 5-1 Monday at Haupt Field.
“Just got lucky,” Huck said with some serious side-eye when asked if he planned it that way. “How did they say it on TV, the ‘A-Team,’ ‘I love it when a plan comes together.’
“It worked out really, really well. We had some weapons we were able to make us look like we knew what we were doing on the sideline.”
Actually, the game went a lot like Huck envisioned, for the first 70 minutes at least. It was a close game between two evenly matched teams, nothing like last year’s 9-1 TCC rout.
The Colonials took a 1-0 lead when Gateway’s Ethan LaCroix hit a shot from about the PK spot that was just out of Pennsville keeper Coen Rinnier’s reach less than four minutes before the break.
And it stayed that way until shortly after the TCC’s last wave of substitutions.
Just about the time Huck was headed over to make his overtime pitch GCIT’s Mike Stanwood got the equalizer when he finished Schalick senior Anthony Sepers’ sharp pass through the box with 10:26 to play.
The coach stopped, turned around and decided to rethink this overtime thing. Then the goals came fast and furious.
Before it was over, Sepers had another assist and GCIT’s Cole Madgey and Williamstown’s Amadu Jalloh had two goals apiece. All five goals came in a span of 9 minutes and 12 seconds.
“Sometimes it just clicks and when you score one, then you’re feeling good and get more adrenaline and you score another and then another and then another,” said Sepers, one of nine Salem County players and four Cougars in the game. “I thought it was going to be a really close game, which it was for the most part, and it just opened up.”
The Tris might not have gotten the first goal if Sepers weren’t so good at reading the field. He was going to shoot it from the left side, but saw Stanwood making a run from behind and pushed the ball through to where he anticipated the receiver would be. It would be the play that changed the game.
“The energy completely shifted,” Madgey said. “It was like no one was really caring and then we scored, then it became a huge energy shift and we all started having more fun and it became more of a game. We scored one and we couldn’t stop.”
Jalloh scored the go-ahead goal two minutes later. About 90 seconds after that Madgey lit the lamp for the first time. Madgey got his second goal moments later off a Sepers corner kick and Jalloh closed the scoring with 64 seconds to play shortly after banging one off the post.
“The corner kick (assist) was actually funny,” Sepers said. “A lot of us all used to play on a club team together so we were messing around and calling that one play and it actually worked.”
“They were all talking about a play they had and I joined in,” Madgey said. “They all said ‘crash,’ and went to the goalie. I just joined in and it kind of found its way to me.”
When the train comes in, everybody rides.
Tri-County 5, Colonial 1
| Tri-County | 0 | 5- | 5 |
| Colonial | 1 | 0- | 1 |
Girls: ‘It’s a Schalick show’
CLAYTON – No sooner had Quinn Berger’s goal from the corner settled inside the goal, Cali Fisler ran over to her teammate and enthusiastically proclaimed, “It’s a Schalick show.”
Fisler and Berger scored the first two goals of the game, about five minutes apart in the first half, and Woodstown’s Ellie Wygand made a big save in the second half as the TCC girls won 3-0.
Fisler, who’s normally assisting other players’ goals, scored the first goal of the night when she lined straight up on Colonial keeper Egypt Bolan (Lindenwold) and buried a shot from about 15 yards out inside the left post with 15:07 left in the first half.
“That was pretty exciting considering I’m not much of a goal scorer in the season, I usually get a lot of assists,” the Cougars’ all-time assists leader said. “But I saw the ball open and I had a shot on net, so I was like I’m just going to take it and it wound up in the back of the net so I’m pretty happy.”
Berger made it 2-0 about five minutes later, and of course it came on a corner kick. The set piece specialist, who had five corner-kick assists on Emily Miller goals in a two-game stretch late in the season and scored directly on a corner in the South Jersey Group I semifinals, put a ball on goal from the right corner that exploded off the keeper’s forearms into the goal.
“That’s literally Quinn,” Fisler said. “That’s the definition of Quinn. That’s what she does.”
Berger had two other corners in the half that had chances to go in. The first was headed over the crossbar by one of her teammates and the other was saved by the keeper and cleared by the defense.
“I honestly don’t know (why it works so well),” Berger said. “I just try to aim for the goal and I have my spot to where I put it on the corner.
“I was always the one who took free kicks, so I was always used to that, but this year is just on a whole different level of excellence. I know where to put it and I know the mindset of where people will be and just put it in the box so they can get it.”
Gianna Simon of Overbrook deposited the TCC’s third goal with 2:36 left in the match.
Wygand played at the end of the first half and started the second. She kept the shutout alive when she reached out with her arm to knock away a shot by Audubon’s Charlie Owens targeted for the upper right corner 11 minutes into the second half.
“I was really focused in that moment when I saw the girl coming at me and all I had to do was make the save,” Wygand said. “I definitely knew she was going toward the back post because of the way she was angled. I kind of just planted and it went the right way.
“Once I made it, I was good and I knew I had people to back me up on the back line and everywhere else. It was awesome.”
Tri-County 3, Colonial 0
| Tri-County | 2 | 1- | 3 |
| Colonial | 0 | 0- | 0 |
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