Tam Falls in NCS Soccer Title Game

In a pair of bang-bang sequences just 10 minutes apart Saturday afternoon, the Tam High soccer squad’s quest for the North Coast Section (NCS) Division I championship was derailed.

Montgomery High star forward Diego Lopez scored two goals in the first half – the first a stunner and the second a gut punch – and Tam couldn’t recover, losing 2-0 and ending a stellar season that saw the Hawks and make their deepest playoff run in more than a decade (Tam won NCS in 2000).

“That’s a real tough deficit to come back from,” Tam coach Dustin Nygaard said of the two goals. “We never gave up, but we really needed to get one [goal] and get some momentum going. But it wasn’t quite in the cards today. I tip my cap to them. They’re a good team and they were just a bit better than us today.”

Montgomery came out quickly, moving the ball and appearing to move a step faster than Tam across the field. Lopez struck first, barely 11 minutes into the game, on a set play that appeared to surprise both Tam and the hundreds of fans of in attendance at Marin Catholic High.

On a throw-in deep in the right corner, midfielder Tanner Pierce heaved the ball toward the near post and Lopez leaped at it feet-first, flicking it inside the near post past Tam goalkeeper Cameron Robach.

“That put us into a little bit of a shell shock,” Nygaard said. “That’s not an easy ball to score on but Diego is a fantastic player and took that ball to the near post like he does it all the time.”

The second goal came at the end of a sequence that had Nygaard biting his tongue after the game. Tam defender Lucas Janetos played a ball to forward Minho Kang in Viking territory, and Kang smoothly headed it down the left side to a streaking Julien Melendez. Melendez was called offside although it appeared he had a defender parallel to him.

The call was made, and in what seemed like mere seconds, Lopez had the ball in the middle of the field in open space right in front of the Tam goal. He blasted a shot inside the right post past Robach, and Tam was in a deep hole.

The sequence proved a brilliant counterattack, something Montgomery had a knack for throughout the game. Each time Tam got off a shot or had an opportunity, the Vikings came right back and pushed the ball deep into Tam’s end within seconds.

“Diego is a wonderful finisher but probably his best quality is his off the ball movement,” Nygaard said. “What he does better than anybody I’ve seen is that as soon as they regain possession, he manages to find open space where he is all by himself. When you have an outlet like that, the counterattack is on.”

Although the two teams play in different leagues, Nygaard is as familiar with the Montgomery squad as any MCAL league rival. Nygaard and Montgomery coach Jon Schwan are close friends – Schwan was Nygaard’s best man at his wedding – and they speak at least once a week about how their teams are playing.

The coaches also co-host the four-year-old Bay City Invitational, a preseason tournament that saw the teams square off in late August, with Tam winning 2-1.

“We know each other and our teams very well,” Nygaard said.

Schwan said his team’s confidence and determination to play at a fast pace was the difference in the game.

“We just wanted to push the tempo and go quickly whenever we could,” he said. “We feel very confident whenever we can get Diego one on one with anybody and if we’ve got to play quickly to do that, then we’ll play that way.”

Schwan said his team, with nine seniors returning from last season’s NCS champions, was relaxed and confident.

“They were ready for this stage,” he said. “Tam was maybe a little more tentative. This is a confident group I’ve got here, almost to a fault at times.”

For Nygaard, it was the end of a season in which his team seemed to grow by leaps and bounds each weak behind playmakers Melendez and Gabriel Cavalcante and a core group of standout seniors, particularly Robach, who’d never played goalkeeper before his junior year, as well as midfielder Imran Nana and center back James Gilmore.

“It was a great season,” Nygaard said.