2011 St. Thomas Aquinas Boys Soccer

vs. Windham  9/2

Photos by Anand Daswani

St. Thomas traveled to Windham for the first time.  Windham is in its third year as a school and its second season as a varsity program.  Last year they didn't have any seniors so their entire team returns this season.

The Saints took the field with Tri-captain Ed Conroy and Jon Nartiff at Strikers.  Tri-Captains David Ham and Jeff King at Center midfield.  Connor Bailey and Andrew Civiello on the outside.   The defense of Jon Kiskinis, TJ Tetreault, Noah Schwaegerle, and Evan Surprenant.  Neil Hallock was between the pipes for St. Thomas.

The Referees did the game in a three man system which we normally don't see until the semi finals of the play-offs.  NH High School soccer normally employs the 2 man system.  During the rules interpretation meeting the head of NH referees asked school to do a few games in the 3 man system to help the referees get used to this system before the play-offs.  This means the school has to pay more for the extra referee, so I applaud Windham for paying for this.

Now the Windham field is not designed well if you have to pay for soccer balls.
The ball boy and their bench players did well chasing balls as they went over the low
fence and rolled down the hill.  We are glad the player who slipped and fell on the road
wasn't hurt serious or run over.

Gotta love the foot work on the ball boy

The half ended at a 0-0 tied but St. Thomas had outshot the Jaguars 5-2 and had a number of chances go wide

At 51:38 handling was called against Windham in their penalty box. The Assistant Referee flagged the call and the Center referee blew the whistle.  Teams lined up for PK then the ref realized the call was in the box just above the Penalty mark.  He called the assistant ref onto the field and they talked a bit then they moved the ball over to the side and outside the box and gave us a direct kick.

At 59:04 #13 from Windham, Chris Ulbrich. Scored off a direct kick from 25 yards out. It was a nice shot.

What followed was a team that wouldn't settle for a loss.  Players lined up for the kick off and worked the ball down through the entire Jaguar team.  Bryan King sent a ball back to Jeff King who rocketed a shot from 20 yards out into the bottom left corner to tie the game at 1-1 in 32 seconds.

For the final 20 minutes St. Thomas poured on the pressure.  Windham dropped everyone behind the ball except one player who they kept sending the ball to every chance they got.  The Saints defense kept thwarting that move.

The game ended in a 1-1 tie in regulation and for the second time in as many games the Saints found themselves facing overtime.

Now the Referees announced we would be playing one 10 minute period and there was no golden goal.  Coach Suleski went over and talked to the referees explaining that that wasn't the rule for NH High School soccer and they tried to tell him it was a new rule.  Coach called over the Windham coach and got him involved in the conversation.  Having just played Coe Brown in OT coach was pretty familiar with the rules.  The referee offered to go get the rule book from his car, but Coach Suleski pointed out that the rulebook is a NHFS book and doesn't have the NH overtime rules in it.  So the referee went and got his cell phone and called his assignor and was told that we should play Two 10 minute periods of golden goal with a 2 minute breaks between and switch sides.  Exactly what coach told him.

Windham scored a questionable goal in the overtime that had the referees discussing if it was handled into the net or not for a length of time before the center referee over ruled the assistant and awarded the goal.

Coach was proud of the fact that no one lost control of their emotions in what was truly a great test of will.
That fact that everyone will be able to play in our next game against Oyster River will surly help.

The Saints will host Oyster River on Friday 9/9 in a game that is sure to be exciting.

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