What a game!

S-E played Mt. Markham today in the last game of the regular season, with its undefeated record at stake. At the beginning of the game, things did not look all that promising. It was cold and raining, as it has been for most of the last six or eight games. This was S-E's fourth game in the last six days, and the games have been intense and exhausting. At the last game, on Thursday night, Coach Rodriguez got red-carded, so he was not allowed to coach this game or even to attend it. Mr. Seddon went up with the team along with Mr. Lake instead. There was a glitch in the bus scheduling so the team had to wait half an hour for the bus and got up to Mt. Markham with only a short time for warmup. The two exchange students, Artur and Arthur, are both away for the weekend on a Rotary bus trip, and Jesse Hoff went with his family to Chicago, so the team was down by three players (though some JV kids came up instead.) Last time S-E played Mt. Markham, it was a close game that S-E won by one goal in overtime, and Mt. Markham has been steadily improving and winning lots of games since then.

Last year, of course, S-E broke Mt. Markham's two- or three-year undefeated record, and since then quite a rivalry has grown up between the two schools. Mt. Markham obviously figured this was their opportunity to get S-E back by breaking our undefeated season. They came out amazingly strong and, for much of the first half, outplayed S-E. On the wet field, S-E had more trouble than usual with passing and footwork, and Mt. Markham took advantage. Still, S-E held them to a scoreless tie at half-time, and by the end of the half S-E was getting its rhythm back. In the second half, S-E controlled much of the play, but in spite of that, at the 16-minute mark, Mt. Markham scored. The minutes ticked down fast from there; S-E had several opportunities but couldn't finish them -- and then with 4 minutes left, Wes Tomaselli scored to tie it up.

Now, it looked as though the game would have to be decided in two 10-minute overtime periods in that cold nasty rain. The clock ticked down to zero, but the teams kept playing. The scoreboard clock was wrong by a few seconds because it had not been stopped quickly enough when the goals were scored. The refs had told the kids not to stop playing when the horn blew. When it blew, Sherburne was in the midst of an attack on MM's goal, and they kept right at it. In that few seconds after the clock hit zero, with six seconds left in the game, Travis Tomaselli scored and the game was won!

Maybe in another hour or two my heartbeat will get back to normal.

With that final goal, Travis broke Matt Lake's record for the most goals scored in a season at S-E. If you put the whole thing in a movie, nobody would believe it. What a season! We don't know the sectional schedule yet, but watch this space -- as soon as we do know, we'll post it. Go S-E!!