{"id":17248,"date":"2012-12-02T01:19:01","date_gmt":"2012-12-02T06:19:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/?p=17248"},"modified":"2012-12-02T01:36:15","modified_gmt":"2012-12-02T06:36:15","slug":"amateur-cup-bp-gunners-victorious-in-snowy-state-final","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/?p=17248","title":{"rendered":"Amateur Cup: BP Gunners Win in Snowy State Final"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

BOSTON – Battery Park Gunners cleared a major hurdle in the defense of their National Amateur Cup\u00a0championship by beating Mass Premier Soccer 2-1 at Madison Park High School\u00a0in Saturday’s snowy state final.<\/p>\n

MPS\u00a0went into halftime\u00a0with the lead thanks to\u00a0former Revolution defender Sam Brill, who\u00a0scored in the 41st minute.<\/p>\n

The second half\u00a0saw another former Revolution player scribble his name on the scoresheet when Joe Germanese equalized in the 60th minute.\u00a0Matt Shea scored the game-winner in the 86th minute.<\/p>\n

The Gunners’ win earns them a berth in the region 1 tournament, which will kick off in spring 2013.<\/p>\n

Despite the frosty conditions (gametime temperature: 31 degrees), neither club encountered any trouble firing up the engines in the first half. In fact,\u00a0Battery Park nearly seized the opening goal\u00a0inside of\u00a014 minutes when Ryan McDaniel crossed it far post for Bobby Linaberry. But Linaberry banked it off the post.<\/p>\n

MPS put the Battery Park defense under siege for stretches in the first half, but with little to show for it. That was until Brill knocked a Nick Cristman corner kick through to grab the lead minutes before the interval.<\/p>\n

However, the Gunners would get their revenge in the final 45. After MPS lost the ball inside their own end, the Gunners counterattacked, with Karl Desmond leading the way. Desmond found Germanese to his right, where the former Revolution midfielder fought off a pair of MPS defenders and tucked it inside the far post.<\/p>\n

MPS eyed an opportunity to reclaim the lead 15 minutes later. Cristman looked for a give and go with T.J. Thompson until defender Jason Pan intercepted the return pass.<\/p>\n

With both teams’ attacks stalling inside the final third, the match seemed destined for overtime.<\/p>\n

Then, in the 86th minute, John Griffith pointed the Gunners to paydirt when he played an incisive pass through to Shea. With\u00a0only\u00a0keeper Jeff Newman to beat,\u00a0Shea\u00a0calmly\u00a0put it away to\u00a0send the defending champions\u00a0back to region 1 play.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A pair of former Revolution players – Sam Brill and Joe Germanese – each scored in Saturday’s state final. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17251,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[104,176,177],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nesoccertoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/BPG-MPS-1.png?fit=484%2C262&ssl=1","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17248"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17248"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17248\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17258,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17248\/revisions\/17258"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/17251"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17248"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17248"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17248"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}