Roskos cashes in early gift as Delran eliminates Cinnaminson
CINNAMINSON – The calendar said November.
It sure seemed like Christmas to Drew Roskos.
“It was a long throw-in by Mike Papi. We've been doing it all year," Roskos said. "It works a lot of the time. It just came in, I turned around, and it was like a present at my feet.”
Roskos put it just inside the left post from about 7 yards out and the Delran High School boys' soccer team had the lead. About four minutes later his left-footed cross found Gabe Moura at the right post, and the Bears were two goals to the good.
For Cinnaminson, there was no way back from that. Delran advanced to the South Jersey Group 2 championship game with a 2-0 victory on Tuesday afternoon.
“Drew is relentless,” Delran coach Tommy Orr said. “He has no problem changing tasks; whatever the coaching staff asks. It's been a battle for him, dealing with man-marks, double teams and everything. So he had to adjust his game a bit and be a playmaker. That's what he did for us today.”
It's not that he wasn't tempted to finish it himself.
“I got it on my left side and I was thinking about taking the hit, but it was good communication from Gabe,” Roskos said. “I heard him screaming. I didn't even look – I just hit that ball across and he was there.”
He felt for an instant he might have overhit it, but Moura never thought that.
“I just saw Drew and then I knew I had to get there,” Moura said. “We've been playing together since we were little and I knew he could get the ball there. I had one job to do – just finish it. There's no better feeling than that.”
And there's no worse feeling than preparing, executing, putting the work in – and still having to chase the state champion from two goals back after just 12 minutes of play.
“I thought the first half was very even,” Cinnaminson coach Matt Digney said. “If anything, I called it 60-40 for us. We preached getting that first goal during the second half and making this very competitive, and of course we couldn't do that.”
What it means
Delran, the sixth seed in the bracket, will host eighth-seeded Sterling, a 3-0 winner over Willingboro, in the sectional final on Saturday.
Key play
Cinnaminson put a restart into the Delran box less than a minute after Roskos' goal. The Pirates' Nivraaz Singh won the ball and played it back toward Aidan Quinn-Wright, just inside the 18. Quinn-Wright's finish found a gap between two Bears' defenders, but climbed just over the crossbar. It didn't clear the retaining fence behind the net, which is only about a foot higher.
By the numbers
Delran is now unbeaten in its last 33 playoff games (30-0-3), though it was eliminated once in a shootout during that streak. The Bears have won sectional finals in six of the past seven seasons. The only exception was 2020, when Delran didn't take part in the postseason. … Delran has a five-game unbeaten streak against Cinnaminson in the postseason (4-0-1, with a shootout win). The Pirates' last playoff win against the Bears came on Nov. 9, 2007 – TJ DiLeo had a hat trick in a 4-1 triumph in the South Jersey Group 2 final.
Unsung heroes
Mike Papi handled restarts and was a physical presence in the middle of the field to counter Quinn-Wright, who was effective in his holding midfield role for the Pirates.
They said it
Digney, on his team's start:
“At halftime I couldn't harp on those two goals. Credit to Delran – they scored them – but I wasn't pleased with how we were very sluggish on those; not responding well. It's stuff that we've cleaned up all season. For some reason we didn't do it there.”
Orr, on Delran's difficult regular-season schedule:
“This is a prime example of a game where I really and truly believe it pays off. We pride ourselves on getting ourselves ready for games like this. I think we're battle-tested, and we proved that today.”
Roskos, on taking the early lead:
“We needed to just come out here, get the first goal, get the first two goals, and then just go from there. Once we get that first one, we just keep pushing and have fun the rest of the way. That's what it's all about.”
Moura:
“This rivalry means so much. We haven't beaten them here in a long time (since 2017), and there's no better feeling than doing it today. It's playoffs.”
John A. Lewis is a sports writer for the Burlington County Times, the Courier-Post and the Vineland Daily Journal. E-mail him at jlewis@thebct.com. Please consider supporting local journalism with a subscription.
This article originally appeared on Burlington County Times: Delran rides goal and assist from Roskos into sectional final
