An overturned tractor-trailer on the Bay Bridge turned a 3½-hour drive to Owings Mills for an NCAA tournament second-round game into a 7-hour nightmare for No. 8 Salisbury.
But Saturday's 12-4 victory over No. 7 Stevenson made it all worthwhile for the Sea Gulls, who improved to 17-4. They will travel to Lynchburg, Va., to face the No. 4 Hornets (19-2) in a tournament quarterfinal on Wednesday at 7 p.m.
"Let's put it this way: it will be a day I'll always remember," coach Jim Berkman said this morning. "It all ended well, but it was the trip from hell getting there. We virtually sat there for 3½ hours and we couldn't move. And then we finally got on the bridge and we're 60 yards from the top in two-way traffic, and a car died from overheating. So we sat another 20 minutes on the bridge trying to get around that car. It was a pretty crazy day."
When the team finally got off the bridge, it stopped at a Wawa convenience store on Interstate 97 to buy some sandwiches and water for a famished and dehydrated group.
"At that point, we were looking at 7:30, 7:45 [p.m.], and we had left Salisbury at 1:45," Berkman said. "So we got some sandwiches and some water, and we re-grouped everybody in the parking lot at 7:55 and said, 'Hey, we've got to refocus, this was our pre-game meal in the parking lot. Now let's go win a game.' We were onboard from that point on."
Berkman said there was some discussion about postponing the game until Sunday, but he and the rest of the Sea Gulls faithful were happy the game went on three hours after the originally scheduled faceoff of 7 p.m. Salisbury scored seven of the first eight goals against a Mustangs squad (16-5) that had won the regular-season meeting between the two sides, 9-8 in overtime, on March 25.
"We obviously got off to a good start," Berkman said. "We got a couple big saves from our goalie. We executed pretty good on offense. We cleared the ball extremely well, which was one of our priorities going into the game because in that last game, a one-goal game, in that [second half], we had five failed clears when they went to their 10-man ride, and I thought that was really the difference in the game.
"That was our top priority going into the game, that we had to do a much better job clearing the ball and clearing it quickly before they could set up the 10-man ride. That kind of negated the 10-man ride throughout the game other than maybe one time in the fourth quarter. But our kids responded well."
Berkman acknowledged that Saturday's win was gratifying after enduring that regular-season loss to Stevenson at Sea Gulls Stadium in Salisbury.
"It's always satisfying when you can come back against an opponent that got you earlier in the year," he said. "We're a different team from the one we were earlier in the year. Even though [sophomore attackman Nathan] Blondino played in that first game, he only played five minutes, and he had four goals on Saturday night. We're a different group from what we were then."