Leaping to his right, simultaneously turning away the ball and Boston’s championship dreams, Jason Stenta never blinked. The nearly 500 fans in attendance rushed West Gym Field, and for the fourth straight season the Binghamton soccer team will play for the America East title.
In a shootout necessitated by the 1-1 deadlock through regulation and two overtime periods, both the Bearcats and the Terriers made their first five penalty kicks, but after freshman midfielder Kyle Kucharski made the sixth for Binghamton, Terrier sophomore back Paul Mignogna was rejected by Stenta, advancing the Bearcats to the finals.
“I was just trying to get a read on him, and then when he put the ball down, he came in, he closed his hips, so I knew he was going to go right to my right, his left, so once I knew that … I just dove high and I got to it,” Stenta said.
Going into Wednesday’s semifinals match at West Gym Field, Binghamton (8-6-5), the America East’s regular season champion, had the advantage of the No. 1 seed and the hometown fans’ support. But the Terriers (10-4-5), who had defeated the Bearcats once already this season, held a 1-0 lead for over 65 minutes.
The Bearcats outshot the Terriers 2-1 in the first half, Boston’s one shot being sophomore Peter Sigurdsson’s 2-on-1 goal. And after senior midfielder Ibrahim Yusuf banged a shot off the crossbar and briefly hung his head in frustration close to the half’s end, he and the rest of the Bearcats went to the locker room to regroup from a disappointing first 45 minutes.
“It’s the poorest I’ve seen us play in the first half in a long time,” said head coach Paul Marco. “I was very disappointed at halftime; we had talked about it and we had said that if it doesn’t get better, our season will end.”
But with less than 12 minutes remaining in regulation, Binghamton finally broke through as senior forward Joey Neilson, amid a cluster of players in the box, headed sophomore midfielder Cody Germain’s cross into the right corner to tie the game at 1-1.
“I just didn’t want the clock to run out, I felt we were playing pretty well but I didn’t want time to run out; that would’ve been disappointing,” Marco said. “I would’ve felt at that point in the game that we didn’t lose, we just ran out of time.”
Binghamton doubled the Terriers’ four shots with eight in the second half, one of which was Neilson’s goal. The game went to two 10-minute overtime periods in which the Bearcats were outshot 4-0, but Binghamton was able to send it to a shootout thanks greatly to Stenta, who had six saves on the day.
The Bearcats scored all six of their penalty kicks in the shootout, but not easily. Junior midfielder Matt Narode, who was the third Bearcat to kick, came as close as can be to missing, hitting the ball off the top crossbar, but fortunately for him and his team the ball took a downward bounce far enough into the goal for the shot to count.
“Probably one of the toughest things I had to do ever; you’re so nervous, your stomach’s churning,” Narode said of the shootout. “You’re thinking, ‘just gotta put it by the keeper,’ but it’s pretty nerve-wracking. Especially when you see the ball hit off the crossbar, that doesn’t really help.”
Stenta, who had put in extra work on penalty kicks with Marco in the days leading up to the game, was confident in his abilities, despite missing the first five Terrier shots.
“I’ve dealt with Adam Chavez’s [penalty] shot, so I know it can’t get much harder than that,” Stenta kidded. “I told our seniors that this wasn’t going to be their last game, I just wanted to get ’em to the finals, because they don’t deserve to go out like that — PK’s last year, the year before that, just don’t want to end it like that.”
BOX: Kyle Antos, senior captain who had not played since Sept. 20, returned to the field and, outside of some cramps, felt good. Ryan Bertoni also returned from injury, and while he did not see any action, Bertoni would have been the next to take a penalty kick after Kucharski had it been necessary. Cody Germain, another player bit by the injury bug, returned for the first time since Sept. 13, and his impact was felt immediately with the assist to Neilson.
There was some physical contact between the two heated teams, with two yellow cards being handed out, one to each team at different junctures.
“It’s a playoff game, there’s a lot on the line, it’s going to be chippy,” said senior captain Kyle Antos. “In playoff games, that’s usually what you get.”