After a tough opening season home loss to a big and physical SAR (5-4), the TABC soccer team visited SAR this past Sunday. The SAR home court is known as the soccer ‘hockey-rink’ beast. Knowing that wins at SAR are few and far between, TABC—utilizing a focus on tight ball control and side-board-accompaniment—started out decisively with three unanswered goals in the first period. Two came from Refael Minsky (’18) and one, from mid-court, by Yosef Goldblatt (’17). After SAR broke the shut-out with a goal in the first half of the second period, TABC scored three more unanswered goals, one by Golan Meir (’17), assisted by goalie Yoshi Spivak (’17), and two unassisted goals by Roi Shushan (’18). TABC entered half-time with a 6-1 lead. Following a quick third-period goal by SAR (closing the score to 6-2), TABC scored twice more with goals from Golan Meir (’17); this gave TABC a late third-quarter 8-2 lead. TABC took a time-out with less than two minutes to go, and then exited with a final offensive swarm. Avital Avidan (’17) scored with 48 seconds left. The team shut down SAR’s final offensive push thereby prevailing with an unprecedented third-period mercy of SAR on its own court. In the annals of MYHSAL soccer, this was an historical event. With great talent, Yosef Goldblatt (’17), Aviel Avidan (’17), Ezra Friedman (’18) successfully stifled defense and back-floor control. A congratulations is in order to Yoshi Spivak (’17), for great-goal-tending, and holding SAR, at home, to two goals.
Coming off an historic mercy win at SAR, TABC hosted Flatbush this past Tuesday; Flatbush is a new entry into the JV division. From the start TABC engaged in an offensive blitz, scoring 6 unanswered goals in the first period. Two goals each were won by Golan Meir (’17) and Refael Minsky (’18), and one each by defensemen Yosef Goldblatt (’17) and Josh Lieman (’17), with a beautiful assist to Josh by Efraim Tiger (’18). Flatbush, though, broke the shut-out with a late period goal. In the second period TABC continued offensive dominance by scoring three more goals, two goals from Golan Meir (’17) and one from Dov Baron (’18); the half-time score was 9-2. Four more answered goals in the third-period—two from Dov Baron (‘18) and one goal each from Ami Gerszberg (’18) and Meir Olshin (’16)—resulted in a 13-2 mercy, TABC’s 3rd consecutive mercy.
Continued kudos are extended to Yosef Goldblatt (’17), Aviel Avidan (’17), Ezra Friedman (’18) and Josh Lieman (’17) for, once again, stifling defense and back-floor control. And last, but not least, to Yoshi Spivak (’17), along with Ari Solomon (’18) and Yisroel Tannebaum (’18), for great-goal-tending and holding Flatbush to two goals.
By Bruce Minsky
