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PHOTO BY ROCKY ROSS

EARLY LEAD. Wilson senior Tyler Bretana scored his team’s only goal in the eighth minute of the Rams’ Narrows League playoff game against the Lincoln Abes.

Lincoln notches playoff win No. 2

By Ben Miller

Last season, the Lincoln Abes boys soccer team won its first playoff game in school history against Central Kitsap. This time around, they wanted to do it again. Against the Wilson Rams April 29, the Abes doubled their playoff win total with a 2-1 overtime victory in the Narrows League tournament.

But it took some late game heroics to do it.

Down 1-0 and with time flying off the clock, the Abes looked to be in dire straights near the end of regulation. After an attempt to get the ball in the goal in the 19th minute of the second half that Lincoln thought was the game-tying score, the Abes still found themselves down by one with less than 10 minutes left.

Then, senior Alex Feist made a move in the box toward the Wilson goal, looking to extend the game and the Abes’ season. He didn’t get a shot off, but a Ram player took him down from behind, and in the 32nd minute he kicked a goal left past Wilson goalkeeper Josh Proctor to tie things up.

“He just kind of brought me down from behind so I just walked up and stuck it in,” Feist said.

Three yellow cards and a Wilson corner kick that almost ended things in regulation later, the game went into overtime. It didn’t take nearly as long for the Abes to get on the scoreboard in the extra period than it did in regulation. Just five minutes into the overtime period, Lincoln freshman Alfonso Zuniga put in the game-winning goal.

“I didn’t expect it to go in,” he said. “I just kicked it – it was a lucky goal.”

Alfonso Zuniga received a pass from senior Juan Zuniga at the top of the box and curved the ball right over the goalkeeper’s head, below the crossbar and in for the score. Lincoln had a 2-1 lead with 25 minutes left to play.

“The kids stepped up, they wanted it, they became more aggressive,” said Lincoln coach Monte Gibbs. “They were fighting harder for the ball, and all season we’ve been missing that one little goal – that one goal to get the win or that one goal to get the tie and we finally got it. We were saving it up for quite a while.”

Wilson had a number of opportunities after Zuniga’s goal but just could not convert. In the first half, the Rams were the ones sitting pretty early on. In the eighth minute, Tyler Bretana scored on a rebound off of a missed free kick to put his team up 1-0. In the second half, though, the Rams backed off the pedal offensively and let Lincoln be the more aggressive team. Gibbs said he thought that is what hurt Wilson the most.

“They had a one goal lead and they started to protect it and they started to bunker,” Gibbs said. “Once that happened, once we got our goal, they couldn’t turn it back on, they were in a defensive mode – and that’s what did them in.”

The Abes celebrated on the field after Zuniga’s goal and will face Bellarmine April 30. “I love it, we got the win last year and this is as far as we go,” Feist said. “Now we just have to prove ourselves. We are just looking to go farther and keep progressing.”

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