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One for the Ages: Wall Beats Ocean, 5-4, in State Tournament Thriller

Matt Manley|November 5, 2025|Last Updated November 5, 2025

OCEAN TWP. — Garry Linstra owns more career coaching victories than any other active boys soccer coach in the Shore Conference, a product of 24 seasons and 492 games as the head coach at Wall  heading into Tuesday’s NJSIAA Central Jersey Group II Playoff opener against rival Ocean Township.

When the first-round match was over, he described a ride unlike any one of his teams had ever taken him on.

“That was absolutely insane,” Linstra said. “Twenty-four years, almost 500 games, I have never been a part of something like that.”

The head coach with 302 career wins, two NJSIAA sectional titles and a Group III championship to his credit during his two-plus decades with one team watched his current group of Crimson Knights — seeded No. 11 in the Central Group II section — overcome the absence of three starters and a relentless Ocean attack to pull off an unforgettable, 5-4 road win over the sixth-seeded Spartans to advance to the Central Group II quarterfinals.

“Neither team ever gave up,” Linstra said. “A lot of times, with high school kids, at some point, somebody gives up. Both teams continued to fight, and we just came out on the better end.”

Junior Shane Womack scored the two biggest goals of the game, both go-ahead finishes in the final eight minutes of the match — including the deciding goal that came 20 seconds after Ocean tied the game, 4-4. When the dust settled, the two teams had combined for seven goals in the final 28:19 of the match and four goals in the final 11:19.

“We felt like we had three game-winners there,” Womack said of Wall’s three go-ahead goals in the final 22:03 of the game. “But they (Ocean) kept coming back. Holding strong in the last two minutes was important. It was pretty crazy.”

Ocean rallied from a one-goal deficit to tie the game three different times and also held the lead, 2-1, early in the second half. Wall responded each time, starting with a momentum-shifting free-kick goal by senior Christian Garduza. An Ocean foul 30 yards from the goal set up a direct kick in the 56th minute, and Garduza buried it in the near upper-right corner of the goal to tie the game, 2-2. Ocean had taken its first lead four minutes earlier, when junior Connor Shaw knocked in a corner kick from classmate Nic Critelli.

“I just wanted to shoot it on goal,” Garduza said of his momentum-swinging free kick. “Too many times, I hit those out of bounds, so I just took a shot. I think it brought our energy way back up, and it probably hurt theirs.

“It was probably the craziest game I have ever played in. There were upsets within the game: we scored, then they scored, then we scored — back and forth. We gave everything. It could have been our last game, so we just gave everything.”

“His game has really stepped up the second part of the season,” Linstra said of Garduza. “We have seen him shoot like that before, and for him to come through today was amazing. I think the kids fed off seeing that shot and just believing more and more as we went along.”

Two minutes after Garduza tied the game, Wall surged back into the lead on a goal by sophomore Luke Harmon. Freshman Oliver Rhoades ripped an initial shot that Ocean goalkeeper Matt Makower saved, but Harmon crashed the box, beat the Ocean defense to the ball and hammered in the finish for a 3-2 Crimson Knights lead in the 58th minute.

Following a scoreless 10 minutes, Ocean finally answered with the equalizer, which came on the second goal of senior Brandon Cosentino’s hat trick. Shaw ripped a free kick into the Wall wall, recovered it, then lofted a pass into the box. Cosentino boxed out a defender, chested the ball to the ground and ripped a shot off Wall sophomore goalkeeper Kellen Clauburg from point-blank range and into the goal in the 69th minute.

“We shadowed him and when he held the ball, we looked to try and double him,” Linstra said of Cosentino. “He didn’t get it off the run of play: he had the PK, the header on the set piece and the free kick that came back out. We could have done a better job on those. (Senior) Matt Appel was on him, and I thought he did an amazing job. I was very proud of him. He was down about giving up the goals and I was just like, ‘Hey, the kid scored off three tough plays, but in the run of play, you did a good job.’ He (Cosentino) is a phenomenal player. He found a way to score three goals when we were trying to shut him down.”

Cosentino’s goal was the start of a frenetic 12 minutes to close out the game, during which Wall held three different leads. Four minutes after Cosentino’s equalizer, Womack struck for the first of his two goals by making a far-post run, chasing down a cross from senior Shea Davis and ripping it inside the near post for a 4-3 Wall lead in the 73rd minute.

“I think maybe after they scored, they felt a little more easy,” Womack said of Ocean’s defense following its goals. “They knew that they were back into it, and they thought they could take the game over, but we didn’t let them. We kept coming at them.

“Counters were a big thing for us. When we got off the defensive, we put all our heart into finishing on the opposing side whenever we won the ball back.”

Cosentino delivered again in the 77th, when he headed in junior Luciano Ibarra’s long free kick into the far right corner of the net to tie the game, 4-4, with 3:03 showing on the clock.

Ocean stayed even with Wall following Cosentino’s third goal for all of 20 seconds. Pushing forward right after the kickoff, Garduza played the ball up to Womack, who chipped the ball past the last defender, beat Makower to it and chipped it over the Ocean keeper for yet another go-ahead goal with 2:43 showing on the clock.

“That’s being in the right spot at the right time,” Linstra said of Womack. “He has been doing that all year long and sometimes, he just hasn’t been able to finish. Today, he was in the perfect spots both times and he was able to finish. We have been focusing on finishing goals like that. We do a drill every game day and it’s meant to finish plays like that and the repetition worked out for us today.”

“Me and Garduza have a good connection, so I knew he was going to chip it up to me,” Womack said. “I saw a guy to my right, so I knew if I just touch it forward past him, there was only the goalie coming at me, so I just chipped it over.”

Wall senior Evan Ker got the scoring started in the 19th minute off a pass ahead from Garduza, with Ker cutting it back to his left and finishing for a 1-0 Crimson Knights lead. Wall answered with the equalizer in the 26th, which came on a penalty kick by Cosentino after Shaw drew a trip inside the 18-yard box.

“I think Even Ker was big. He did amazing today,” Garduza said. “I’m usually the only one up top and he stepped up today. He got us the first goal and started a lot of the other ones too.”

With three starters sidelined due to injury, Wall summoned its additional motivation Tuesday from two games that went sideways for the Crimson Knights — one in their recent past and one a full year ago. On Sept. 8, at the same location that Tuesday’s game was played, Ocean beat Wall, 4-1, in the Shore Conference Class A Central division-opener for both teams.

If that loss did not give this year’s team enough to prove, last year’s season-ending loss to Rumson-Fair Haven did. Wall defeated Rumson, 4-0, during the 2024 regular season, then absorbed a 4-0 loss to the Bulldogs in the first round of the NJSIAA Central Group II Tournament. According to Linstra, he forgot about that opportunity for symmetry, but his senior captains did not.

“Before the game, one of our senior captains (Tanner Griffin) goes: ‘Last year, we beat Rumson, 4-0, in the regular season, then we lost to them in states, 4-0,'” Linstra said. “‘They beat us, 4-1, earlier in the season; we can reverse that.’ Seeing that happen to us last year made us realize we could do it to somebody else this year. Sometimes, just giving the kids some belief and something to buy into, things can work out in your favor.”

Wall played without senior defender Brendan Grober, senior defender Luca Rulli and sophomore forward Chris Knight — all of whom are out for the remainder of the season due to injury, according to Linstra. The re-shuffled lineup has caused hardship for Wall during the course of the season and at one point, the Crimson Knights had lost eight of 10 matches with just wins over Red Bank Catholic and Keyport to break up the losing streak.

Prior to that 2-8 stretch, Wall beat St. John Vianney in another high-scoring battle, 6-3, then knocked off Shore Conference Tournament champion Middletown South, 1-0, on Sept. 22. The 2-8 stretch began two days later with a loss at Long Branch.

The Crimson Knights have now won three straight heading into a sectional quarterfinal showdown with No. 3 Point Pleasant Boro on Friday in Point Pleasant. While Wall sees the NJSIAA Tournament as a chance to turn around is season and end on a high note, Point Boro is a team that has been riding a high since it started the season 1-6-1. Since that rough eight-game stretch to open 2024, the Panthers are 12-1-1, which includes Tuesday’s 1-0 win over Arthur L. Johnson on penalty kicks. It also includes a 1-0 win over Wall.

“We didn’t have the season that we hoped for, but in games we saw flashes and a few games entirely where we showed greatness,” Womack said. “That’s what we want to become so we can have a far run in this tournament.”

The 2-8 stretch Wall endured, the hot streak Point Boro is enjoying and the head-to-head win for the Panthers over the Crimson Knights are all part of a season Wall’s players have put behind them. It is a new season and these Crimson Knights are 1-0, with a win that made their 300-win coach feel like it was his first win as well.

“We keep talking about how this could be our last game, but we don’t want it to end,” Womack said. “I love all these guys and we just want to keep cheering each other on. We don’t want it to be over.”

“Two-hundred-fifty-six public schools were playing today and there is going to be a Cinderella somewhere in the state,” Linstra said. “We have just been saying, ‘Why not us?'”

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