November
13, 2006
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| Paramus senior Connor Nutland (3) played the whole game and held his own in the air despite a freak accident that had him on an operating table at Valley Hospital one hour before game time. | |
ORADELL – Offsetting penalties in football, a lane violation on a free throw in basketball, a batter being granted timeout just as a pitcher is delivering a pitch and a tie game after 100 minutes of soccer in the Bergen County Boys Soccer Tournament final. What do all of these situations have in common? They are amongst the rare instances in sports where the ‘do-over’ comes into play.
Played in a sideways rain storm for the better part of the second half and the two overtimes and stymied by the rule that says there are no penalty kicks in the county final, Paramus and Ramapo played to a 0-0 draw and threw the oft delayed tournament schedule into further disarray.
The semifinals were delayed a week by a wind storm and the final will now have to be replayed in its entirety. With Ramapo still alive in the state tournament and having its Group 3 state semifinal coming up on Tuesday, the game likely can not be played until Thursday at the earliest. If Ramapo wins on Tuesday and earns a trip to Friday's state final, next Sunday looks like the best bet, although that is yet to be determined. If the rematch is also played to a draw, the teams will be declared co-champions.
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| Marc Gotelman (right) had Paramus' best scoring chance while Ramapo's Will Brackett (left) had a goal disallowed by an offsidses call. |
“We are tired,” said Ramapo defender Lee Barden, whose team has now played three straight overtime games, including two state tournament wins. “We are all disappointed because we wanted to win this today because we have a couple of hard games this week. But you can’t do anything about it.”
The weather conditions certainly played a factor in the stalemate even though the FieldTurf at River Dell High School was up to the task. The rain started in buckets for the first time just as the whistle was about to blow to open the game. That caused the temperature to drop, the wind to kick up and the cold to seep in.
As for the game itself, Ramapo’s best chances came off of long throw-ins from the side as EJ Alvarado was busy getting to the sidelines, taking on defenders and making the Paramus defense use the out of bounds line as an extra defender.
Tim Decilveo’s long throws led to many a scrum in front, but the Paramus defense and keeper Tom DeBenedetto did a good job of limiting quality scoring chances. The Raiders did manage to put one ball in the back of the net when, with 19:50 left in regulation, Ramapo was awarded a restart 40 yards from the goal. The ball was played into the left where Will Brackett got over the top of a defender and headed one down and in, but it was disallowed by an offsides call.
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| Ramapo's EJ Alvarado earned his team scoring chances on throw-ins with his pressure on the flanks. |
Three minutes into the first overtime, Ramapo won three straight corner kicks and on the last one Lee Barden headed one on target and past the rushing DeBenedetto. But Jake Weinberg was in the proper position, stationed at the near post, and he cleared the ball off the goal line.
Paramus did not have many quality looks, but did nearly connect early in the second half when Marc Gotelman ran onto a bouncing ball and volleyed it from 22 yards away. Ramapo keeper Roman Papov was up to it, however, leaping to get a hand on the ball and pushing it onto the crossbar before it skipped over.
“My sense was that [the game] wasn’t played well. I didn’t see either team getting done what they were trying to do,” said Paramus head coach Michael Ben David. “They got into set piece situations, they got into their set pieces and we defended them well. We didn’t move the ball the way we like.”
Paramus’ offense was hampered by a freak injury to Nutland, the senior sweeper who was on an operating table at Valley Hospital in Ridgewood less than two hours before the scheduled game time. Nutland was at a team pasta party on Saturday night and leaned on a computer table, which gave way and sent a screw shooting into his wrist. It actually made contact with bone and left shards of metal that are still imbedded in his right arm.
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| Paramus keeper Tom DeBenedetto was solid in net for the Spartans. |
Nutland, who usually takes all of Paramus’ long throw-in opportunities, could not continue in that capacity, but did play the whole game with his arm heavily bandaged and was involved in plenty of the madness that went on in front of his net.
Nutland had never missed a varsity game in his career and was not about to missed what was supposed to be his last one, even though the pain killer he was issued wore off some time during the first half.
“It hurts,” said Nutland, walking off the field on his way to another team dinner. “I never missed a game before and I was on an operating table an hour before the game was supposed to start telling the guy, ‘Hey, I have a game in an hour can you hurry this up?”
It was just another subplot to a tournament that has gone from strange to surreal to now never ending.
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