The Pride of Southernmost Niagara County 6, Polonia 4

Pendleton's Twitter account don't lie--you really can't get any further south in Niagara County than Wendelville (along Campbell Boulevard, anyway...although, without consulting a map, I'm pretty sure Niagara County's southern border consists of a straight line). You cross the bridge at Tonawanda Creek, you enter fabled Niagara County, and, voila, a fire hall and a couple terribly maintained middle school-sized soccer fields await. Mosquitoes, too--bring your malaria nets assuming it's not May. Today, you were good with an umbrella or two.

So I made the mistake of stopping at a Tim Hortons on Millersport Highway (just north of UB) at around...5:35 maybe? I went to the bathroom, stood in line for 5-7 minutes, got my last-minute medium coffee, and...realized I'd be getting to the field a little later than desired. But, 5:50 should be good, right? Wrong. As I sit in the lot putting my ankle braces and pads on, I turn down my music at the sound of a ref's whistle, and I say aloud: 'are the teams taking the field?' I dig for my cell phone: 5;53 PM. Whistle blows, game begins. F*cccckkk. Two ounces of coffee consumption was not worth missing the beginning of the game. I hustle up with the tedious dressing process (if it were up to me, I'd wear cleats and go commando on the shin guards and socks...ankle braces according to how optimistic I feel on a given day), but wouldn't you know, I see a Pendleton forward beat our nearside (left) defender 100 yards or so away from where I'm parked, turn the corner, and...the ball ends up in the net in the first minute.

I jog over around 5:56; we get an equalizer, scored by the usual suspect, recent Medaille signee David Mack. 1-1.

As I approach the sideline, complaining to multiple Sokolowskis about the early start time in a voice loud enough where I hope that the ref might be hearing me, Pendleton gets another one. i don't even recall how this happened, except there was a some sort of unfortunate bounce that Derek told me about later--attempted clearance went right back at us or something. I didn't even really see it. 2-1.

At this point, I just ran onto the field, took off the closest defender out of frustration, thus starting my game at the unfamiliar position of LB. I have essentially no left foot so playing at that position handicaps me more than it would handicap most. Has Electronic Arts yet added right-foot/left-foot split ratings for professional players on FIFA? If not, that's gotta happen for FIFA 2018. Anyway, I get out there, and nothing really changes in the immediate aftermath, as it's soon 3-1 PU on a REALLY DUBIOUS CALL--opposite sideline, Derek is running 1 v 1 with an opposing forward (presumably Jones, who apparently had 4G 1A today), and he's called for a foul...on this particular call, I think the foul was justified, but the location was probably not...but, in the ref's defense, how is the ref going to get that right on a field with invisible ink for line markings and from 30 yards away? So he calls a PK and most of the Polonia 11 lose their minds. We're lucky on the whole that we didn't incur another Chuck Donner-style red for 'abusive language' towards the middle ref this week--I all-but-guarantee you that I personally would've gotten at least a yellow today if I did not have the Chuck ordeal in mind. As it is, we escaped with one yellow on that front. Anyway, very questionable PK called, Pendleton steps to the nonexistent spot that the ref pointed to after taking 12 yard-like strides away from goal, and he buries it stage/keeper left. 3-1, maybe 10 minutes in.

I'll just say now that the half finished 3-2, and from the PK on we were the better side. The next 35 minutes felt like a return to regularly scheduled Polonia programming. Pendleton is a good team, surely one of the best in this division, but from the ten minute mark to about the 75 or 80 minute mark we had the better of the play. The goal which made it 3-2 resulted off of a rebound from a free kick, taken by David Mack from a dangerous Beckham-at-his-most-lethal area near the corner of the 18...the keeper got a solid hand to it, but this FK happened to be a rare occasion where both Derek and I were crashing the net, and perhaps we should do that more often, as Derek slammed it into the roof of the net from close range to considerable celebration.

Considerable celebration because, well, I think I speak for others that at that point it felt like we might be the ones to end up winning the game 6-4. On that micro-field, we were never far away from goal, and Mr. Wallenfels was always one ball away from sending Mr. Mack in directly on goal. And their keeper/no keeper was going to hold onto a first-time shot without a rebound tonight.

But things didn't go as they may have been planned at the 40 minute mark or so. When the second half opened up (and we had the wind), our inability to win aerial balls (most notably off the punt) became most apparent. One of Pendleton's strengths, or at least it appeared so today, is to win flick-on headers off of both throw-ins and GK punts. That, or one of our weaknesses today was that we won way less headers in those situations than we'll need to going forward. In any event, this was a theme of the game and kept us from controlling play to the extent that we should've. One factor of many, but worth pointing out.

The first half of the second half was still majority Polonia's, though, and eventually it got to 3-3 off of some great combination play, improbable though that may be on a field with uncut, wet grass. I forget the exact sequence but I'm pretty sure Dave Mack, Randy Moyer, and Jake were all involved, as I remember congratulating all of them after the goal. 3-3 and I thought we were favorites to win. Glad I didn't pull a Pete Rose aand livebet on my own team, because I would've lost both my bankroll and my eligibility for the future inaugural class of the BDSL Hall of Fame. We still applied the pressure in the immediate aftermath, but soon after that...

the 4th goal for PU was really strange, and I'll attempt to reconstruct it as well as I can. I might get something wrong in this sequence, but here goes: There was a corner kick from the SE corner of the field. I head it out from around the 6 to a PU player maybe 30 yards from the endline, just wide of the corner of the box. He has time, plays an unexpected ball towards the near post endline. Our GK Brian goes for it but is eluded by the PU attacker, who makes him miss by cutting well but further away from goal...so naturally at this point I backtrack towards the goal, as our GK is out...and now he's out further! Brian chases play all the way to the corner of the box. I'm worried because PU looks likely to get some shot away here but I feel like it's congested enough that we've got it covered. Alas, not so. Play somehow gets back to the endline, around the fringe of the box, and a cross is played in...which should be dealt with by our near-post defender, who I think will at least put it out of play for a corner...but no--it's flicked on far post, and sure enough PU has a crashing forward who slams it home from maybe 2 yards out as a Polonia defender almost gets a block in. Un-f*cking real. I stood there motionless for a solid 5 seconds processing what had just occurred.

We still had at least 10 minutes to try to get it back, but we kinda went hockey extra attacker/empty net mode from this point forward. For real--our GK Brian on one occasion caught the ball at the top of the 18, took it as far as midfield, played a perfect through ball to F Jake Kowalewski, who made the Pendleton GK miss in similar fashion to the play I just described above...thought he might try to bury it from a terrible angle, but instead, after a couple touches, he played it back to his fellow forward David Mack, who struck it well far corner, but the Pendleton GK here made a hero save to deflect it out for a corner. Game-saver. Our GK Brian was at this point somehow all the way at the opponent's six and maybe got into a shoving match with a Pendleton defender or something (I didn't see what happened), but whatever occurred, the center ref...ordered him back to our box?! Lol--he can be wherever he wants. In fact, he retreated, but only as far around midfield. Ball was eventually cleared to around that point--I was retreating, Derek was retreating, and Brian was definitely retreating, but somehow, the ball was played to around the corner of the 18, where Derek had a lunging attempt to clear, got unlucky and hit it back into Jones' path, and Jones made no mistake, slotting it near post, bottom corner, just past a diving Brian.

5-3, maybe 5 minutes left, and Polonia were officially deflated.

Pendleton got one more maybe 3 minutes later, and Polonia got the consolation goal of all consolation goals on a PK immediatelt before time expired.

Hope we see them again in the playoffs.

yeah, self, you're a f*cking moron--you acknowledge that Tonawanda Creek constitutes the border, then you postulate that the border is a straight line...better luck on the geography quiz next time

actual southernmost NC is boring old NT. Pendleton is still 'southernmost' if defined as existing along the border