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AUBURN — The Yarmouth High boys soccer team is the Gold Ball standard in Class B, but the Clippers’ 16th state championship did not come easily.
For the second game in a row, Zacarias Binda scored the golden goal in overtime, running onto a long pass from sophomore center back Joel Butler and sliding a shot past Oceanside keeper Grady Geretz with 7:16 remaining in the extra session to give the Clippers a 2-1 win at Edward Little High in Auburn.
It was the third straight overtime playoff win for Yarmouth, which last year had its season end in the South final.
“It’s great. We’ve worked hard for this and it finally came,” Binda said. “We’re used to us winning every year and we wanted to get back on track, and we worked hard for this and we got it.”
Yarmouth (16-1-1) now has nine state championships in the last 11 seasons. Oceanside (15-3), meanwhile, was playing in its first state final.
The Mariners clearly did not get the memo that they were huge underdogs.
Oceanside came out with aggression from the start. Whether it was stout defense and throw-ins deep into the box from Dylan Chiaramonte, winning midfield plays from Lucas Novicka and Elliot Trott, or sharp maneuvers by Aiden Willis at the top of the offense, the Mariners got the better of the play for the entire first half.
“These boys believe in it. They honestly believed they could win,” said Oceanside coach Robbie Krul.
Yarmouth goalie Julian Gebhardt had already been called upon to make multiple saves when Willis was on his doorstep with under seven minutes to play in the first half. Gebhardt came up with another stop, but Willis stayed with the play and banged in the rebound to give the Mariners a 1-0 lead in the 34th minute.
Both teams had played an overtime game in cold conditions on Thursday. Oceanside, with a 16-player roster, had to stick with its core.
“We are typically a second-half team,” Krul said. “They heavily relied on their strength, and to give us a Thursday night game and then barely a day to recover is ridiculous.”
In contrast, Yarmouth was dealing with key players out because of injury and illness but still had ample depth to not only make substitutions but to have their reserves provide boosts of energy and game-changing moments.
One of the key reserves was sophomore forward Tate MacVane, who knotted the score midway through the second half with a splendid one-time, belt-high strike of a crossing pass by George Brown.
“I saw it dropping down and I just put my foot on it and tried to direct it toward goal,” MacVane said. “I think we gained a lot of momentum after the goal.”
Butler was another key reserve. Yarmouth’s second-year head coach, Justin Morrill, said Butler has often been called on when his on-ball skills could be used in the back.
“As we started to have more of the run of play, we knew it was going to be a more technical game, and Joel’s a very technical player,” Morrill said.
Butler made his winning setup sound simple. Binda was calling for the ball, he said, “so I decided to just play it over his head and it got to him perfectly. He wanted the ball. I tried to feed him the ball.”
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