By: Rich Fisher & Dave Gurney
As the sky got darker, the tension grew thicker.
As the air got colder, the crowd reaction got louder.
Eighty minutes of regulation, 20 minutes of overtime and eight rounds of penalty kicks still had not solved anything.
Something had to give.
Finally, East Brunswick’s Chris Hajjar hit a PK to the low right that South Brunswick goalie Kevin Gramata dove and saved. That left it up to the Vikings Dan Miller, who calmly put his second straight PK into the lower left corner to give fourth-seeded SBHS a pulsating shootout victory in the Greater Middlesex Conference boys soccer tournament quarterfinals Wednesday.
The Vikings, who have now beaten JFK 2-1 in overtime and EB in a shootout in the GMCT, will meet St. Joe’s in Saturday’s semifinals. The 9th seeded Falcons upset top-seeded Sayreville on penalty kicks Wednesday.
How much further the Vikings (12-5-1) can go is anyone’s guess, as they have gutted out two straight GMCT wins with Zach Zenda sidelined with a broken leg and Troy Confessore bothered by a bad hip and a wart on his toe that caused constant bleeding against the Bears.
"This is a big morale booster," Gramata said, "because with Zach’s broken leg our morale’s been down, but after these two games, it shot it back up. Troy’s bothered by his hip, Sean (Tyree) sprained his wrist. We have a lot of injuries but we’re fighting through."
Despite his pains, Confessore came up huge against East Brunswick (11-6-2) with a goal and two penalty kicks.
The Bears took a 1-0 lead midway through the second half, when a questionable handball-in-the-box call led to Brad Reiner’s penalty kick.
With time running down, the Vikings knotted it on a weird goal. As EB goalie Zach Stahl came charging off his line, Confessore tapped a shot toward the goal that Stahl simply ran past. It was the third goal of the tournament for the junior forward, and for the Vikings.
There would not be a fourth, however.
In the first OT, Reiner ripped a shot off the crossbar. In the second, Bryan Keller sprung Confessore with a pass in front, but the point blank shot was saved by Stahl. Kazuki Yamada then lofted a corner kick that was headed by Chris LaCorte and saved by Stahl.
The set up the shootout, and daylight was quickly fading away.
EB shot first and missed, and Confessore gave the Vikes a 1-0 lead. Rob Campos tied it on the Bears second shot and Stahl made a nice save on Tyree to keep it tied.
That set in motion a gut-wrenching sequence for Viking fans. EB went ahead 2-1, 3-2, 4-3, 5-4 and 6-5, only to have the Vikes counter on scores by Miller, Yamada, Confessore, Tyree and Keller.
Finally, South had a chance to pull ahead when Gramata guessed right on Hajjar’s shot.
"I guessed every time," the junior keeper said. "It was so hard to see though, the ball went right through my hands. East Brunswick is a great team, we just came up big."
The Vikes had advanced to the quarterfinals by taking a 2-1 overtime win over John F. Kennedy Monday.
Hobbled and bruised, South Brunswick withstood the physical Mustangs to tie the game late in the second half and win in overtime off a pair of goals by Confessore.
The latter was not without some controversy. In the 87th minute, Tyree took the ball down the right sideline, eventually dribbling it into the corner of the JFK end of the field.
Tyree was taken down by the defender and the ball went out of bounds. The official ruling was a corner kick in favor of the Vikings, much to the dismay of the 13th-seeded Mustangs.
On the ensuing kick, Keller’s ball was won by Tyree, who knocked the ball inside the box and traffic to Confessore, who pushed it by the JFK goalkeeper for the game-winning goal.
"Bryan Keller played a great ball down to the corner and the guy tried to shield me and I knocked the ball off of him," Tyree said. "On the corner, something just told me I need to go up and win this ball. And Troy did a great job of putting it in the net."
The goal ended what was an often ugly and scrappy game that led to several yellow cards and the restraint of some of the coaches and players at the end before it turned into a melee. But, despite the unpleasantness, the bottom line for the Vikings was a win, regardless of how it got to that point.
"Any tournament win is a good win, it’s about surviving and advancing," coach Chris Hayston said. "Unfortunately we gave up an early goal, but we came back defensively and we put two chances away. They had chances to score and we had them also, but we just converted one more chance."

