No one I knew of journalistically was more well-versed in the Shawnee-Toms River North field hockey rivalry than I was.
Starting with Kim Bush's 'Penalty Corner Shot Heard 'Round Ocean County' in 1987 that gave the Mariners their memorable NJSIAA South Jersey Group IV championship in overtime, a North-Shawnee field hockey game was a well-anticipated matchup to watch on a New Jersey high school sports level. The skill that went into one of those matchups was incredible. And it was always a matching of wits between the two head coaches, Shawnee's Bobbie Schultz and North's Becky Miller, two longtime coaches who respected one another.
But it may have been Miller who said it best about the rivalry, stating, "Bobbie and I have similar coaching styles, so in a way, it doesn't come down to style. It comes down to determination."
That determination, I wasn't sure, was there on North's side. Just 14 days earlier in the Shore Conference Tournament semifinals, the Mariners had their lunches and dinners handed to them by eventual tourney champion Allentown, 6-1. It was as big a bashing I've ever seen a Miller-coached field hockey team take. From that standpoint, I figured North would go through the motions when it came to the state tournament.
But they won their opener as a third seed at home on November 7, 1997, against Washington Township. Now the Mariners had another matchup, but Shawnee, the second seed, was standing in the way. It was another typical Schultz-coached team, though this particular year, her team wasn't headlined by a superstar player or two. The Renegades, though, had a star defense, one that had given up less than 10 goals for the season. So if North was going to win this one, its defense needed to be at its absolute best.
And this team's makeup was a little different. It was a mix of senior veterans such as forward Lauren Skripko, midfielder Teresa Andreani and defender Meghan Clarey, but the heart of their defense was anchored by a freshman goalie, Nancy Velez, who had just been brought up to the varsity after a successful freshman team season that saw North give up just one goal at that level and win the county championship.
Still, freshman level and varsity level are two completely different types of ball. How success on the freshman level translated to the varsity level was a whole different matter. And to be honest, I wasn't all that sure I felt good about this particular game this Veterans Day Tuesday afternoon, November 11, 1997, as I headed to Medford, three years to the day I saw North and Shawnee play last for the NJSIAA SJ IV championship, North losing a heartbreaker, 1-0, after upsetting unbeaten Eastern Regional in the semifinal matchup.
I wasn't all that sure how well this page of the North-Shawnee story would write itself out. That '94 game was a great one, just like the other two I had witnessed in back-to-back years in 1987-88, the first one being the Bush goal that sent North to the SJ IV championship and, ultimately, its first state championship. The second one was bittersweet -- it had been exactly nine years earlier at North that the Mariners held a 1-0 lead with less than a minute to go when Shawnee forced the issue and beat North goalie Linda Kurtyka on a loose ball for a score with 18 seconds to go to tie the game, then win it in a penalty one-on-one shootout to grab the SJ IV title and ultimately win the Group IV title itself.
More importantly, Shawnee was looking to play in what would have been a 12th straight SJ IV championship. North was the semifinal hurdle Schultz and the Renegades needed to leap to get there.
Honestly, I wasn't sure what was in North's tank that brisk, cool fall afternoon. But I knew one thing from watching North break the huddle with Miller -- they were excited to play. They rightfully took that "we have nothing to lose" attitude.
And for the first 30 minutes of the game, I can see it was going to be a "first to attack the net relentlessly and scores wins" game. Neither team's defense was giving to the other. But for as good as North was playing after that slaughter by Allentown, I was wondering if this was nothing more than living off of borrowed time.
The teams reached halftime scoreless. I looked at my sheet to see the shots on net -- "not a lot to very little" was how I described it. I kept getting that stronger feeling the first one to one was going to take this battle. But all I kept doing during halftime was looking over at North's huddle in the corner of the field. Something told me if they could just find an alley way to the net, they'd have a strong shot. Andreani, Clarey and their defensive mates were fairly strong in the first half and being veterans, I just had a feeling they could hold Shawnee down for a long time.
The second half began with Shawnee bringing the ball down on North's defense. And it seemed like the Renegades were there for a long, long time. They were biding their time. They had one shot on net in which Velez made a pad save. Less than a minute later, they had another shot on net that Velez kicked aside.
That test early in the second half gave me reason to believe North may have a shot in this one after all. Trouble was the Mariners were having a hard time mounting an attack in Shawnee's end. By the end of the game, the Mariners mustered just five shots on net against Shawnee and goalie Brooke Peterson. So North bided its time. Something, you'd think, would open up. It was a matter of being patient. And when your record is 16-3 going into the game, you figure patience has held up for you somewhere during the season.
But how long was this going to keep going on? North got down to the final 10 minutes of regulation, not able to push the issue much in the first 20 minutes of the half. Thank goodness that defense was playing stellar.
Finally, passes clicked for North and the ball at long last found its way into the Shawnee circle. The ball banged off a Shawnee leg, and that was an automatic penalty corner. So everyone took their places for what might be a golden opportunity for the yellow-and-blue clad Mariners. Another freshman -- Lauren Shern -- maneuvered the ball to the baseline to get the play started. I had literally watched her grown up in front of me because her father, Mike, was Lacey High's longtime field hockey coach and mentor of the NJSIAA Group III championship Lions team of 1994 that stunned West Essex in the championship at Trenton State College, ending West Essex's 86-game unbeaten streak, to take home the title.
So from her standpoint, Shern pushed a perfect pass to the left side of the circle where Katie Facciponti had it on her stick. She dodged one defender, still maintaining the ball. Thought she was living dangerously, especially against this defensive attack of the Renegades. But she was able to make her way to the center of the circle, still with ball in tow. To her left side, she saw Skripko. From there, Skripko got the ball and banged away until it found the back of the net behind Peterson.
Mariners players screamed loud as soon as the ball crossed the goal line, making it 1-0. There was 7:03 left in the match. Was this going to hold up? After all, I had been here before on North's field exactly nine years earlier. The Mariners had spent all afternoon trying to get away from Shawnee players. Now they had the golden opportunity to attack and cashed in on it.
Just seven minutes left from a championship date on my birthday two days later.
As expected, Shawnee had the ball back in North territory. Trouble was, the Renegades could not thread the needle of a perfect pass that would put Velez and her teammates in danger. Either the ball got deflected or miss the target. And the time was running down on the Renegades.
With each ball going out of bounds, the Mariners kept letting more time go by. There was nothing the Renegades could do -- they had all game to make some noise and couldn't. And so as the timekeeper got out of her chair to follow the main official down the field in the final 90 seconds, I suspected that the Ghost of '88 was not coming back to haunt North. And as 18 seconds left arrived, then went away, that part of history wasn't repeating.
"Five ... four ... three ... two ... one" followed by a whistle to end the match.
North players on the bench stormed the field to hug their teammates. They had gotten the job done, 1-0, and the Mariners would have one more SJ IV opportunity to bring home another title. Shawnee players walked slowly toward North's players to give the congratulatory handshakes at the end of the game.
But North was more than excited. And to top off the win, just as I was about to talk to Miller about this latest milestone in a Hall of Fame career, I can see Clarey from behind with a water bucket.
Yup, I got out of the way in time from enduring a Gatorade bath that Miller was getting. This was Miller's fourth win in her career against Shawnee, but first since the Bush goal and the '87 SJ IV championship.
"We all felt confident," she told me afterward. "We came into the game that way. But the kids did the rest with desire and determination."
That, they did. They were outshot for the game, 8-5, but yet, endured and were determined to send Shawnee home earlier than normal. For the first time since 1985, Shawnee, whose season ended at 17-2-1, was not playing for an SJ IV title. It was time to celebrate on North's side.
So I found both Skripko and Andreani, good friends who I covered in sports they were better at than field hockey, Skripko, an all-everything point guard who I watched take North to the state Group IV title as a sophomore in 1996, and Andreani, a star catcher for North's softball team who would earn her way to all-state first-team honors in this, her senior year.
"We don't get intimidated," Skripko said smiling, green eyes gleaming among the backdrop of the pretty colors surrounding Shawnee's field. "We know we're the underdog, so we go out there with nothing to lose."
"We pretty much stayed positive throughout," Andreani said. "We wanted to win, and to do that, we had to stay aggressive. Shawnee moves the ball around really well. We haven't faced a team quite like that."
On this nippy day, these Mariners were on fire and picked the right time to burn a talented bunch of Renegades. But if this were a championship game instead of a semifinal, this would be an awesome story. As I arrived back at the Observer building to write the story, I thought of the big hit of the time, "Tubthumping" by Chumbawamba.
So the lead read like this:
"MEDFORD -- They got knocked down. But they got up again. Now it seems no one may keep the Toms River High School North field hockey team down."
These Mariners had been knocked down, but battled back.
But they still had one more obstacle in the way -- Thursday, November 13 against top-seeded Cherokee, which had dusted off Eastern Regional in the other semifinal. North once again went out west, this time to Medford Lakes, to play for the championship. And though North had a great outing against Cherokee's Chiefs, it didn't resonate quite as much as it had two days earlier. Kelly Rose scored 13:05 into the game and the Chiefs' defense made it hold up, outshooting North, 9-3, in a 1-0 win that saw North's Velez hold her own with seven saves.
Unfortunately, that would be the last bit of glory I would see covering field hockey in Ocean County. With girls soccer moving from the spring to the fall starting in the 1996-97 school season in the Shore Conference to compete against the rest of the state, a lot of talented soccer players who played field hockey remained in soccer and the talent level wasn't quite as strong as it once was.
My last season of covering field hockey at the Ocean County Observer was 1998. It was a meh year. Good teams, but not great enough to challenge for a sectional title. The wave of no longer having soccer players play field hockey had already washed up on the county shores.
So that '97 North-Shawnee game was the last "stand" of county field hockey greatness I saw in covering the sport for 14 seasons. Of all the teams I've covered over the years, I'll always treasure the games played by Becky Miller's Mariners. They were in some epics.
And it always seemed like Shawnee brought the best out of the Mariners.
The 1997 SJ IV semifinal was no different.
