Sockers Wrap Up 9th Banner Season : MSL: Everybody gets into scoring act as Sockers close out Crunch, 8-6.

The Sockers have one fewer goal scorer than they currently have championship banners hanging down from the Sports Arena rafters in Game 6 of the MSL championship series.

Those seven goal scorers kicked in eight goals--Paul Dougherty had two--and the Sockers earned the right to hang a ninth banner as they defeated and deflated the Cleveland Crunch, 8-6, Thursday night in front of 12,073.

“It’s a miracle,” said Coach Ron Newman, who, when fitted, will be the only member of the organization with a choice of nine championship rings.

“It’s something that’s magic. What we keep doing is incredible. It’s phenomenal. I don’t care if it’s the NBA, the NHL, or whatever . . . What we’ve done is like a bloody tugboat winning the America’s Cup, is what we did.”

Newman had no doubt that the latest victory was the sweetest.

“Only because I think it’s more and more impossible to keep doing it every year,” he said.

The championship could turn bittersweet. Still unresolved is whether owner Ron Fowler will continue to fund the team, which continues to lose money.

It could also be the final championship here for two Sockers who have been large contributors to the team for so many years: Kevin Crow, who is contemplating retirement, and Branko Segota, who becomes a free agent.

“Hopefully I can come to terms with the Sockers,” said Segota, who did not get into the game until the third quarter but came through with two assists. “Like I said before, I would like to finish my career with the Sockers.”

Segota, at one time the most potent player on the Sockers roster, has had to yield that role. But it hasn’t been taken over by only one individual.

Not only did seven Sockers score goals, but 10 players were credited with at least a point.

So overwhelmingly have the Sockers blurred the concept of individual goal scorers, that the Most Valuable Player award actually went to a guy charged with keeping the other guys away from the net, Ben Collins.

“I’m so happy,” Collins said. “For me to win the MVP as a defender makes me so happy.”

Collins finished the game with two blocks, a goal and an assist.

Though it wasn’t close in the end, Cleveland actually took the initial lead. It came midway through the first quarter when Zoran Karic breached a poorly constructed defensive wall and shot a 35-foot free kick by goalie Victor Nogueira, who did not flinch as the ball sailed to his left.

But the Sockers scored three unanswered goals to forge a 3-1 lead. All came in a 5-minute, 26-second span that bridged the first two quarters.

Collins got the equalizer as he pounced on a rebound of a Dougherty shot and ricocheted it barely under the crossbar.

Early in the second quarter, Glenn Carbonara, who scored only five goals in the regular season and had yet to score in the championship series, dribbled a ball through the midfield and hit a 40-footer that caromed in off the thigh of Cleveland defender Andy Schmetzer.

Not even two minutes later, Dougherty right-footed a shot from the left side that bounced in off the far post. Dougherty had an open path after Cleveland’s defense collapsed around Ben Collins as he dribbled in past the red line before dishing to Dougherty.

But for the third time in the series, the Sockers would blow a two-goal lead.

Greg Willin and Karic took care of that this time. Karic’s second goal, which came from the right boards off a corner kick from Mike Sweeney early in the third quarter, was good for the game’s second tie, 3-3.

The comeback, however, did not bring composure to the Crunch, who instead suffered two defensive breakdowns.

Alex Golovnia took exploited Cleveland’s first lapse, running onto a rebound of a Segota shot at the red line that initially landed at the feet of two Cleveland defenders. After the ball squirted away and to Golovnia, the first-year player from the Soviet Union settled the ball and wound up for a 45-footer that made its way under the crossbar.

Two minutes later it was Jacques Ladouceur’s turn. He took a pass from Brian Quinn down the right boards and dribbled into the corner before aiming a pass to Crow at the far post. It never made it to Crow. Cleveland’s Hector Marinaro, in an attempt to clear the pass, accidently knocked it into the net.

The Sockers still couldn’t get comfortable as Cleveland came right back to halve the lead on Karic’s third goal of the game. After turning rookie defender David Banks inside out, Karic opened a path to the goal and put the ball onto it to make it 5-4.

Six minutes and 600 decibels later, it was 7-4 as Dougherty and Michael Collins ensured the Sockers’ ninth championship in 10 years with the sixth and seventh goals.

Wes Wade finished the Sockers’ scoring on a breakaway that was spring by a pass from the 10th Socker to get mixed into the scoring, Nogueira.