Garden City, Great Neck North named co-champions in Nassau Class A boys soccer
Finn Connolly #9 of Garden City, left, and Ethan Ran #22 of Great Neck North battle for possession during the Nassau boys soccer Class A final at Garden City High School on Wednesday, April 28, 2021. Credit: James Escher
After 110 grueling minutes of actions and reactions, players from both top-seeded Garden City and No. 10 Great Neck North didn’t know how to react after the final whistle sounded in a 2-2 tie in the Nassau Class A boys soccer final on Wednesday.
Most players collapsed onto the turf of the Garden City field in fatigue or disgust. The rest milled around almost in shock. A few seemed even upset with the fact that there would be no penalty kicks after the second overtime. (Because of COVID-19 there are no Long Island soccer championships. Since there was no additional game to advance to, both were ruled co-champs.)
According to Nassau soccer administrators and Garden City coach Paul Cutter, both teams were told before the game that in the event of a tie after two 15-minute, golden-goal overtimes the game would end without penalty kicks.
"You’re always prepared for PKs," said North coach Anton Berzins, who didn’t recall anything about no penalty kicks in the pre-game conference with coaches and game officials. "It’s unfortunate. The guys battled as hard as they could."
The same can be said for both programs. Garden City (13-0-1) led 2-0 on goals by Andrew Schneider (sixth minute) and Finn Connolly (49th minute). Prophetically, Garden City coach Cutter kept yelling to his team how big the third goal would be.
It came in the 69th minute from GNN senior Alex Geula. Great Neck North (8-3-2) started to dominate possession and get more scoring chances. Stunningly, GNN found the equalizer when Luke Hakimian fed Ben Avakook, who found the back of the net with 27.4 seconds remaining.
Garden City, which had allowed just three goals all season, surrendered two in the final 11 minutes of regulation.
"I was just in shock, because of the way we lost last year with three seconds [left in regulation, 2-1, in the 2019 Nassau A final to Jericho]," said Garden City goalkeeper Sam Myers, who had 10 saves. "All my teammates had to come to me and be like, ’Wake up. It wasn’t your fault.’ "
Schneider nearly had the winner, which was stopped on the goal line just in time by North goalkeeper Matt Heimowitz (15 saves) in the first overtime.
A Garden City player appeared to be taken down close to the 18-yard box with less than seven minutes remaining in the second overtime, but no call was made. The Trojans later had a goal disallowed because of an offside call.
"No one wanted to be declared a co-champion," Cutter said, "The final one didn’t go the way we wanted it to, but that’s the way it goes sometimes."
Myers said: "I don’t feel like a winner, but I also don’t feel like I lost. I’ve never felt this in sports, or anything really. . . . I expected us to win this game, and now — not really winning — it kind of just makes me sad. I don’t know what to think. I’m still kind of in shock."
