This is me tonight. Hi.
I feel like this question always comes up in the postseason of any sport. Is a bye really a reward for dominating the regular season? Or a curse?
I mean, yeah, you get some much-needed rest and all that, but maybe it’s better to stay in a groove and keep the momentum going. Because when it came down to the one game that really mattered, the Blast looked….well…rusty. And Milwaukee looked crisp.
Which is how the Blast lost their first championship game in recent memory to the Wave, 16-7, before 10,274 fans at 1st Mariner Arena. (By the way, kudos to you guys for showing up. I checked, and the last championship game we hosted in Baltimore when the Blast beat the Rockford Rampage, 9,857 fans were in the house.)
“I think you can find pros and cons to the byes,” said head coach Danny Kelly. “We had some bumps and bruises and got some guys healthy. For us, it worked with the way the season ended. … I just think we got away from what got us to this point, and it’s obviously a disappointing result. You’ve got to give Milwaukee credit. They played well, they stuck to their game plan, and we were undisciplined.”
The Blast outshot the Wave, 32-12, but goalkeeper Marcel Feenstra stayed strong, and Milwaukee was precise with their shots. In fact, MISL Goalkeeper of the Year Sagu only recorded three saves on the evening.
“They played a good tactical game,” said Blast captain Robbie Aristodemo. “They sat in and countered, and when they countered, they scored. They didn’t have as many shots the entire game, but they made them count.”
The first quarter was a relatively quiet one for both teams; unfortunately for the Blast, it was completely silent.
Milwaukee got off to a quick start with a sharp, unassisted goal from former Baltimore defender Jonathan Greenfield. No one scored again until the final minute of the quarter when Wave midfielder Ian Bennett snuck up on Sagu off an assist from Marco Terminesi.
Midfielder Lucio Gonzaga turned it on for the Blast though, running up into the stands to give his visiting mother a kiss after he scored off a pass from Machel Millwood. Shortly after, defender Mike Lookingland notched one off an assist from leading scorer Pat Healey. The Wave regained the lead, however, with a 3-point goal that went off the foot of Blast defender Zach Wilkes and into the net.
Things got tense with more than three minutes left in the second quarter, when a fight broke out involving Millwood, Giuliano Celenza and Josh Rife and his awesome sweatband. Aristodemo had gotten tangled up with Milwaukee goalkeeper and game MVP Marcel Feenstra, when Rife and his sweatband got involved, and Millwood and Celenza jumped in on the action. Both teams remained relatively unscathed though, losing Rife, Millwood and Celenza each for five minutes on severe unsportsmanlike conduct charges.
After a morale-boosting halftime speech from former star and fan favorite Denison Cabral, the teams returned to the field. Milwaukee, however, was the first to get on the board in the second half, with an unassisted 3-point goal from Marcio Leite on a free kick. Milwaukee scored again to start the fourth quarter, this time from late-season rental Greg Howes off an assist from Greenfield.
The first power play didn’t take place until the fourth quarter when Oliviero was penalized two minutes for tripping. Tensions ran high when Millwood and Feenstra got tangled up in the goal, but Milwaukee was able to kill the power play and pad their margin with a 2-point goal from Travis MacKenzie off of a rebound on a shot from Howes.
MISL Defender of the Year Pat Morris snapped the dry spell for the Blast with a 3-point goal off an assist from Celenza with six minutes left in the game. But it wasn’t enough. Unfortunately, with Healey in as a sixth attacker and the goal untended, Milwaukee’s trash talker Evan McNeley was able to score a long 3-point shot on a pass from Rife, and Milwaukee became the 2010-2011 MISL Champions.
Sigh.
Some notes…
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It isn’t lost on me that Troy Dusosky didn’t play, and wasn’t on the injured list either.
Hey, I don’t blame him, I’d be scared too.
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Can we talk about the Wave mascot for a minute with the weird blue Elvis hair and the tropical-looking board shorts? He was in attendance. Is there actually a reason why Milwaukee’s team is the Wave? There’s absolutely nothing about Milwaukee that makes me want to go swimming, am I right?
At least the mascot is accurate in that he’s pasty and chubby, like someone else from Milwaukee that we know.
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Amy Keller “baked” tonight, and I ate cake with a knife like a fat kid because there weren’t any forks. This isn’t newsworthy; it’s just awesome.
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The Blast honored 13-year veteran and fan favorite Cabral tonight during halftime. Talk about all-badass. He’s like the all-time leader for the Blast in, well…every offensive category you can think of.
And yet, the field was conspicuously missing him this season.
Prior to the season, some tension arose when Kelly made it clear that Cabral would compete for a spot on the roster this season.
“It’s pretty simple,” Cabral said. “I went back to the office after the summer and I came down to talk about contracts and basically the head coach said the year before last year wasn’t good enough, and I had to prove to him that I was able to go back and play with the Blast and he offered me the opportunity to train with the team and earn my contract.
“I was invited to try out for a team that I played for for 13 years. I thought that was disrespectful, and I didn’t appreciate the way he did it, and I just decided as a man to respect myself, and I said no, I’m not doing it. At that point on, I just decided to stay away from everything because that was totally disrespectful.”
But he returned to 1st Mariner Arena tonight, accompanied by 250 members of his Denison Cabral Futsal Academy, and he was welcomed with a standing ovation. General manager Kevin Healey spoke, recognizing him as a “superstar on the field and off.”
He kissed the logo on the field before leaving, dedicating the kiss to the fans. It was a nice touch and all but…ew. You couldn’t pay me to touch my mouth to that field.
For now, Cabral is focusing on DCFA, and he has signed an eight-month contract to play for a Brazilian futsal team.
