Raiders Beat New Brunswick to Move on to Sectional Championship

Scotch Plains-Fanwood High School’s boys soccer team is back in a familiar position. The Raiders are at the doorstep of another North 2,Group III title.

The Raiders advanced to Friday’s sectional championship courtesy of senior midfielder Michael Delsordi’s goal in overtime Tuesday in the 88^th minute that beat New Brunswick 2-1. Delsordi, who has 10 goals on the year, said the game-winner was his first ever in overtime.

No. 2 seed Scotch Plains-Fanwood will play host to Millburn Friday afternoon at 2 p.m. Millburn beat Scotch Plains-Fanwood 3-0 in last year’s sectional final. Scotch Plains-Fanwood has won 12 sectional titles and seven State Group III crowns, the last in 1998.

“It’s one of our goals, not just the sectional, but the whole thing, we struggled a little bit today, but in all my years here I’ve told the kids that there’s that one game that will be difficult to get by and I can point to one every time we won in the past and today was probably that game," Breznitsky said.

Delsordi ran underneath a volleyed pass and with his body still positioned sideways let fly a shot past Zebra keeper Juan Velez.  

“I saw the ball pop out and knew there wasn’t that much time left on the clock,"
Delsordi said. “I kind of knew where I was. I just tried to get it on goal. That’s the most important thing."

“Mike is an intensive kid who has played every minute of every match for us," Breznitsky said. “He’s not going to give up.”

Scotch Plains-Fanwood pushed the pace for most of the game, but third-seeded New Brunswick’s defense limited the number of quality shots.

Delsordi’s game-winner came out of controlled action as freshman teammate Colin Stripling leapt for a header and sent the ball to Delsordi. Both teams scored in the first 20 minutes as Delsordi set up senior Jason Pearl for a 1-0 lead.

“It’s really a lot of high pressure and we’re trying to win balls and push upfield,"
Pearl said. “We don’t get discouraged when we don’t get a lot of shots because usually we put them in when it counts."

New Brunswick junior forward Adolfo Perez calmly dribbled around three defenders to tie the game at one shortly after Pearl’s goal. But the Raiders kept to their plan.

“We told our kids at the half to keep pressing, to keep running, running, running, running." Breznitsky said. “We felt (New Brunswick) started to tire at halftime. One of the things we point out here is that game after game and year after year is the tradition of the program. I tell them look up there – there are 50 or more titles up there. We have a tradition to uphold."