Decoy Lifts Sockers to a Decision : Soccer: Sockers beat St. Louis, win sixth straight.

For six years Branko Segota lined up on the left and Waad Hirmez on the right to take the Sockers’ free kicks. Now as members of the St. Louis Storm, they watched Sunday night as their replacements, Terry Woodberry and Paul Wright, approached the ball in much the same manner.

Woodberry acted as the decoy on a free kick from the red line directly in front of the goal 3 minutes, 8 seconds into overtime. His dummy run set up Wright’s shot that wound just to the left of St. Louis’ two-man wall, past a sprawling Jim Gorsek in goal and just inside the left post to give the Sockers a 7-6 victory in front of 7,435 at the Sports Arena.

It was the third time in the past six games that the Sockers won after tying with a late sixth-attacker goal. It also extended the Sockers’ winning streak to six games.

Coupled with Wichita’s 6-5 overtime loss in Dallas, the Sockers (14-6) moved 2 1/2 games ahead of second-place Wichita (12-9).

And they did it using a tired play that the rest of the league should have put to bed years ago.

“It used to be Branko and me on that play,” said Hirmez, known for a rocket of a left-footed shot. Segota’s rocket is his right foot. “They still line up the same way. It’s the same old story. Terry has a good left foot so he lines up on one side of the ball, and Paul has a good right foot. Whoever sees an opening takes the shot.”

Now there’s a new generation of Sockers using the ploy.

“It’s me and Terry on top,” Wright said. “We decide who’s going to hit it and where it’s going to go. This time Terry ran at it to try to upset the wall a little bit and he did.”

Woodberry thus opened a crevice that Wright exploited to score his league-leading seventh game-winning goal and his second of the game.

“We’ve been working on that free kick in training,” Coach Ron Newman said. “Paul Wright just has that vicious wallop when he hits it with his right foot, the ball just takes off and he keeps it very, very low. And Terry Woodberry has a vicious left foot, but his shot goes high.”

The Sockers sent the game into overtime 1:21 after lifting goalie Victor Nogueira in favor of sixth-attacker Kevin Crow.

The strategy paid off with 59 seconds remaining when Thompson Usiyan ran into the penalty area, chested down a loose ball and managed to get his right foot on it and poke it past Gorsek and inside the right post.

“(Fernando) Clavijo was going to try to kick it out,” Usiyan said. “But it was too high and I was able to take it with my chest.”

What led up to Usiyan’s goal is an example of what has made the Sockers successful. Usiyan, who was playing in back with Crow guarding against a quick turnover/counter-attack, saw nothing was happening up front, so he switched positions with Woodberry and took the left wing.

Once there, he immediately saw the ball bounding around the penalty area and hustled in for it.

“I was back on the left, but I saw it wasn’t working, so I switched with Terry,” Usiyan said. “My mentality is to go to the goal, and this time everything worked out well.”

Crow, an eight-year Socker veteran, has seen that kind of interaction work before.

“I’ve always prided our team on always playing to each other’s strength,” Crow said.