Imagine you’re watching a soccer game, the Class A boys state championship game, for instance.
You sit through 80 minutes of regulation, no score. Then 30 minutes of overtime. No score.
After that, you watch the game go to a shootout.
When the shootout doesn’t decide a winner, you’re suddenly called upon to take part. Not only that, you’re the anchor, the last shooter. All the pressure could be on you.
Imagine.
That was how Scarborough High junior Micah Abrams spent this past Saturday. He didn’t play a lick during the first 110 minutes of the Red Storm’s Class A state championship game against Mt. Ararat. But there he was anchoring the second wave of shooters with the game still tied 0-0.
Abrams didn’t doubt himself for a second, though, even with the pressure of avenging Scarborough’s 2003 state championship penalty kick loss to Mt. Ararat resting squarely on his shoulders. He stepped up to the ball and buried it in the right corner, giving the Red Storm the state title with a 1-0 win.
“I wanted them to get it done before I went in, but once I was up there to take it I knew I would put it in,” said Abrams. “We’ve been working on them in practice and I’ve been doing okay, so I was confident.”
He was also somewhat prepared. Abrams may not have played at all in the game, but coach Mark Diaz had given him a heads up at practice Friday afternoon.
“I said, ‘If we go to a second group, you might be in that group. Are you comfortable with that?,” said Diaz, whose team beat Greely in a shootout last week to take the Western Class A title. “And he said, ‘Of course I am.’ So I said, ‘Okay.’ I just logged that, so that’s why I put him last because he wanted to take it.
“I think it’s hard sometimes when you’re not in the game to come in cold and bang one, let alone a state championship game with all these people here,” Diaz said. “Some people are built for that and some aren’t. We just tried to find the ones that are.”
First, the Red Storm tried to win the game outright, without going to a shootout. In the first half it looked as if the week off between games had helped Scarborough and hurt Mt. Ararat. The Red Storm was swarming, while the Eagles were caught flat-footed – they were given three yellow cards in the game’s first 20 minutes.
Still though, Scarborough’s scoring chances were hard to come by. The two best first-half opportunities were created by French exchange student Pierre Soubrier. Six minutes in, he lined up for a free kick from 20 yards out after Brent Mayo was tripped. The Eagles established their wall in front of goalie Ryan Vermette, but Soubrier bent his shot around it and off the crossbar.
Twenty-eight minutes into the game, Soubrier played a through ball to Dana Bennett at the left post. Bennett got to the ball just as Vermette was moving into position, though, and the volley was deflected off the goalie.
It was more of the same for the Red Storm in the second half.
Mayo just missed a cross with a header at the far right post 20 minutes in. Three minutes after that, Soubrier found Brent Sabo on a free kick. Sabo got his noggin on the ball, but again Vermette got to it.
“It was just, keep plugging away. Our chances will come and if they go in, they go in, but other than that you just can’t stop going,” said Sabo, a senior. “It’s your last game and you’ve got to give it your all.”
So, the Red Storm forged on into overtime – and then a second overtime – but they couldn’t get the ball past Vermette.
Six minutes into the second extra period, the Eagles nearly got one past Scarborough goalie Derek Poulin. The play started with a free kick from 30 yards out and ended with a complicated weave that resulted in a shot from in close by Caleb Levesque.
Poulin made the save and Scarborough, which gave up just one goal over its last 12 games, headed to a shootout for the second straight game.
“I really didn’t want it to go to PKs but it’s got to end some time,” said senior defender Mike Keenan.
Poulin sat alone on the bench while Diaz was sorting out the shooting order.
“I was blocking everything out, this crowd, all these people, just thinking, ‘focus on the ball and make it like it was practice,'” he said.
Poulin and Vermette each made a save in the first round, so, with the score tied 4-4, the teams moved to a second round.
Diaz and Mt. Ararat coach Rich Renaud had to select five new shooters. Diaz used Poulin and two other starters, Eddie Jones and Keenan, as his one through three, but he had to round out the list with two guys who hadn’t played much – or at all: Drew Kirstein and Abrams.
When Poulin saved a shot by Mt. Ararat’s fourth shooter, C.J. Dirago, the stage was set for Abrams. He took advantage, and the Red Storm finally won the game.
Said Sabo: “It’s so sweet. Oh my god, it’s the most amazing feeling.”
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