Infighting Gets Sockers Motivated

What was this? Coach Ron Newman and midfielder Waad Hirmez both fuming and charging at each other and having to be held back by other players and trainer Bill Taylor?

This was how the Sockers used to win championships, with a healthy dose of intensity saved for infighting. As the Sockers and St. Louis Storm opened the MSL Western Division finals Thursday night, that old custom resurfaced.

Newman and Hirmez exchanged words at the conclusion of the first quarter. And if anger is energy, the Sockers apparently found a way to harness it. The Sockers’ lead at that point was one goal. Two minutes later, it was three. They finished with a 9-6 victory in front of 5,157 at the Sports Arena.

Afterward, neither would admit anything happened.

“I was just trying to urge him on,” Newman said. “And he was just telling me to cool it. I did it to psych them up, to get their intensity level up. That’s the sort of thing that goes on on the bench. You have to do what you have to do to get a win.”

Hirmez used similar rhetoric.

“Nothing happened,” he said. “We won, and that’s all that counts. The objective of the game is to win, and that’s what we did.”

Hirmez, however, did say the incident lit a spark under the team.

“When something goes on on the bench,” he said, “we always come out fired-up.”

Indeed. Less than a minute after the second period got under way, Branko Segota put away any fears that he is still nursing a sore right ankle when he right-footed a shot past St. Louis goalie Slobo Ilijevski.

Defender David Banks got the assist, as he took a cross-carpet pass from Brian Quinn, dribbled down the right side and took a shot that missed its mark, but caromed off the end boards to Segota.

A minute later, Kevin Crow gathered a loose ball along the end boards and sent a pass across the goal mouth to the back post, where Paul Dougherty found an empty net and filled it.

Both goals came after Ilijevski replaced starter Zoltan Toth, the MSL’s all-time winningest goalie.

Toth went down in the first quarter when he came off his line to chase a loose ball. When he got to it, so did Socker forward Rod Castro. The two collided, and though Toth remained until the end of the first quarter, severe pain in his right rib cage forced him to leave at that point.

“One thing is for sure,” said Don Popovic, St. Louis coach, “I hope we don’t lose Toth because that would be devastating to the rest of the players. He has played so well this year. I hope there are no broken ribs, that there’s only a bruise.”

Later in the night, Popovic’s worst fears were realized when he was informed that Toth had suffered three broken ribs and likely will miss the rest of the series.

Toth’s replacement, Ilijevski, is the league’s oldest goalie at 42.

While Storm coaches and players were bemoaning Toth’s injury, the Sockers were patting Crow on the back.

He finished the game with three assists and one goal.

“Kevin was absolutely magnificent today,” Newman said. “I don’t like to single out players after such a strong team effort like that, but I have to single out Kevin. He had an absolutely incredible game.”

Crow’s goal tied the game, 1-1 midway through the first quarter. But it came on a fluke. He dribbled the ball up the middle of the carpet, then tried passing to Wes Wade on the right wing. Only the pass was deflected by St. Louis forward Terry Brown and into the net.

Despite the three-goal lead the Sockers took at the beginning of the second quarter, the Sockers nearly self destructed in the fourth quarter.