'Mental Mistake' Costs Madison in Sectional Final

For the second year in a row, the boys soccer team's season came to an end at the hands of Bernards High School.

The Dodgers, who lost to Bernards in the sectional semifinals last season, suffered a 1-0 loss when the teams met Friday in the North Jersey Section 2, Group 2 championship game.

Bernards scored the decisive goal with just under 15 minutes remaining in the second half, when David Dominguez capitalized on one of very few Madison mistakes on the day. Dominguez took a pass from Erick Villagra after a throw-in from deep in the Dodgers' zone and fired a shot to the far post, past a lunging Matt Gilbert.

“One mental breakdown,” Madison head coach Frank Nunez said. “This team [Bernards] is good enough to beat us on one mental mistake. We made one mistake, and they produced a goal."

But despite effective passing in the midfield all game, Madison consistently struggled to solve keeper Sam Polito—and more notably—the Bernards’ back line, even after switching to a 3-4-3 formation in an effort to increase scoring opportunities.

“You can have possession for 80 percent of the game, but you have to convert your chances,” Gilbert said. “They did that today, and we didn’t.”

After seeing one Dodger sent off with a red card after an apparent elbow inside the box shortly following the Bernards goal—a call that produced doubts and groans from the Dodger fans in attendance and caused Nunez onto the field in search of an answer—the Dodgers continued to control the ball, seemingly unaffected in the midfield, despite being one man down.

But while Madison continued a good job of controlling the ball, it also continued its struggles to find scoring chances.

Just three days after Madison found a way to capitalize on a Hanover Park mistake to earn a 1-0 win and advance to the sectional final, the Dodger magic was nowhere to be found.

"We were always waiting for them [Bernards] to make a mistake for us to break it," Nunez explained. "We’re pretty evenly matched up with them, and you know, they’re a good team. Let’s just face it, they deserve this championship and I hope they go on and win the whole thing."

For a Madison team loaded with senior talent, a season-ending loss at Bernards for the second straight season was tough to swallow.

"We definitely thought we had a better chance coming here this year than we did last year," Gilbert said. "We scouted them and we thought we had it pretty much in control, but one chance and they score. And the season’s over.