Boys Soccer – Beach Back on Top in B Central

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Second-year Point Pleasant Beach boys soccer coach Mike Baiata graduated from his alma mater shortly before the Garnet Gulls went on a stretch of NJSIAA Tournament and Shore Conference Class B Central division success.

Connor Coulter (2) celebrates Point Beach's division-clinching win over Shore shortly after scoring the winning goal. (Photo by Cliff Lavelle)

He then returned as the head coach of the program a year after a Central Jersey Group I championship team lost nearly its entire starting lineup. Monday against Shore Regional, with the Class B Central championship on the line, one Point Beach senior was in the right place at the right time and, finally, his coach was too.

Connor Coulter headed in a rebound with 3:30 left in the game for the go-ahead goal and the Garnet Gulls topped Shore 2-1 to win their first division title since 2006.

“It’s a good feeling to be able to do this here,” Baiata said. “We never did anything like this while I was here as a player, I never won big in college, so to be here for this with this group of guys is something new. This has been a really hard-working group that went out and earned this.”

Point Beach went 3-13 during Baiata’s first season in 2012 and just one year later, the Garnet Gulls have pulled a complete turnaround after finishing off a division title by beating the two-time defending champion Blue Devils.

“It just goes to show that the record doesn’t mean everything,” Coulter said. “People looked at us and saw a 3-13 record, but that didn’t tell the story. Every team is going to have rebuilding years and last year was ours.

“We lost pretty much a whole starting lineup from a team that won states, and we had to kind of start from scratch. Even though we were losing more than we wanted to, we were still learning and it was all so we would be ready to compete again this year. It might have looked like just a 3-13 season, but this championship started last year.”

The two teams entered the second half tied at 1, not unlike the first meeting between the two division foes, during which the game was scoreless at halftime before Shore stormed to a 5-1 win. Shore had more opportunities, outshooting Point Beach 10-6, but the Garnet Gulls made the most of their best scoring chance of the half.

Junior Charlie Turro took a pass from fellow junior Cory Gross and got off a shot that Shore goalkeeper Zach Goldberg pushed up and off the crossbar. The ball bounded right to Coulter, who lined up a header into the open net to break the tie.

[onescreen item="5151914"]“Charlie has been our best scorer this year, and I was just making myself ready in case there was a rebound,” Coulter said. “I knew he was going to put a shot on the keeper and when the ball came back, I wanted to make sure I was the first to get to it.”

Coulter also gave Point Beach the lead 16 minutes into the first half with a penalty kick to the lower left of the netting following a foul in the box on a ball in the air.

“He doesn’t usually take the penalty kicks, but he had it on his face that he really wanted it,” Baiata said. “He looked like he was ready to fight somebody for that shot, so in that case, I was okay with him taking it.

“He’s usually not my first choice and yeah, I was a little nervous, but in that situation, I let the guys on the field decide what to do. They have the best feel for it.”

Shore tied the game in the 34^th minute when junior sweeper Jake Friedland headed in an Alden Aikins corner kick from the back right post to the far left corner of the goal.

“Shore’s a great team and they’re always going to get their shots,” Coulter said. “They are especially dangerous on the counterattack, so we knew we needed to play defensive and make sure we weren’t leaving ourselves vulnerable by getting sucked up. The plan was to get an early lead and then make them earn it. We couldn’t hold it the first time, but once we got the second one, no way we were giving it up.”

The Blue Devils put seven of their 10 shots on the frame Monday, but Point Beach sophomore goalkeeper Ryan Franzoni saved six of them to help keep the Garnet Gulls either on top or even.

“He wasn’t a goalkeeper until the bus ride to our first game last year,” Baiata said of Franzoni. “We lost our starter, and I just asked the guys on the bus if anyone wanted to play keeper and he was the first to raise his hand.

“He made all the mistakes that you would expect a freshman keeper to make, but when he came back this year, he had improved so much without even really doing anything. No club or travel, no camps. He was just more confident in what he was doing, and it showed in a game like this where we needed him to come up big.”

“I know the rest of the team is working hard and it’s my job to come up with big saves when we need it,” Franzoni said. “The team played great in front of me today. They picked me up too by heading the ball away from the goal on one play, so it wasn’t just me back there.”

Point Beach is the No. 21 seed in this week’s Shore Conference Tournament and will be a high seed in the NJSIAA Tournament, which begins on Nov. 5. The Gulls will look to win their second sectional title in the last three years, which would make the 2012 season a footnote in the record book.

“This is a major confidence boost,” Coulter said. “This had the intensity of a championship game because that’s pretty much what it was, so every big game we play now, we’re going to go in knowing we can handle it.”

Box Score

Point Beach 2, Shore 1