Beauty is in the eye of the goal scorer. Ivan Herrera and Micah Thomas disagreed on the quality of Thomas' pass which led to Herrera's overtime golden goal in the Tigers' 2-1 triumph over Elkton in a section semifinal game Tuesday, October 31, at Calvert Regional Park. Thomas wasn't initially pleased with the pass while Herrera called it the "best, great through-ball ever."
You''ll have to forgive Herrera's hyperbole because the pass led to the most significant goal of his career. "It felt great," said Herrera. "Greatest accomplishment I've done all season. Best goal all season, definitely. Even better than the first goal against Elkton [in the regular season matchup]." After running on to Thomas' pass, the junior striker took a few dribbles before sliding the ball past the Elkton keeper and into the net at the 3:33 mark of the extra session. "Micah gave me a great through-ball," Herrera said. "It was the best, great through-ball ever. And I just saw the last five seconds coming down to me. It all came down to me so I knew I had to get it in or I would've lost sleep." Thomas wasn't quite as complimentary. "Honestly, I wasn't really happy with the pass that I had through but it took a lucky bounce and Peter [Olakune] didn't really get a good foot on it, so it just went straight through and I'm happy it got to Ivan and he scored," Thomas said. Thomas had put Rising Sun ahead with a goal from 25 yards out 7:07 into the game. "I got the ball and I just thought, 'Why not?'," Thomas said. "There's nothing wrong with taking a shot. I saw a little open area over the keeper so I just shot and I scored…It was supposed to be more of a line drive shot and I hit it wrong and it went straight over the keeper." While Rising Sun had the better of play in the first half, the second stanza was a far different story. Mason Carrico tallied the equalizer 1:35 into the second half and the Elks dominated possession for stretches. "Our team can play 10 times better than we did," Herrera said. "That's for a fact. We could've played a lot better. They definitely outplayed us, gave us a challenge, so props to them." The tying goal showed the Elks were going to put up a fight for the fill 80 minutes of regulation – and beyond. "It made us nervous, real nervous," said Herrera. "We thought it was going to be not an easy one but where'd get by so for them to score like that and be tied, it was really close." Rising Sun coach Ken Ulrich remained confident. "[I was] a little concerned but I knew that we had practiced all week and knew that we had the intensity," Ulrich said. "This was a playoff game and one of the things we said all week is we're in the one-and-done stage. And at the end of regulation time, I said, 'we've talked about one-and-done all week, well now it's one goal and done. So I said we just have to got out there and push them hard. That's what we did. We adjusted just a little bit, packed our midfield just a little tighter, and kept some speed up top." Rising Sun goalie Ethan Greene made a save in the opening 20 seconds of overtime to keep his team alive. Then the Thomas-Herrera combination won it. Herrera had a similar opportunity in the first half but could not convert. Given a second chance, he came through with the winner. "After I scored that one it completely wiped away all the mistakes," Herrera said. "I thought about that one earlier the whole entire [first] half, even while playing. I knew I was going to lose sleep over it if I didn't score again, so I made sure I scored." Comments are closed.
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