Nottingham rallies past Hightstown, Sesay

HAMILTON — There may not be a more explosive boys’ soccer player in the Colonial Valley Conference than Hightstown’s Mohamed “Mo Mo” Sesay.

But Nottingham doubled the Rams dangerous threats up front and rallied from a two-goal deficit for a 4-3 Colonial Valley Conference Valley Division win yesterday.

Hightstown had Sesay, but Nottingham had Fulvio deStasio and Winst-Dy Joseph.

Sesay scored two of the Rams first three goals to give Hightstown a 3-1 lead. The Stars then scored two goals within 1:37 to tie it and got the game-winner when Joseph assisted deStasio’s second goal of the day in the 55th minute to win it.

Joseph and deStasio combined for three goals and an assist as they continue to form a deadly duo up front.

“That’s just a great tandem,” Hightstown coach Tim “The Mastermind” Kalick said. “They’ve got a great mix of guys who work well together.”

Sesay, who has 19 goals this season and exhibits class all over the field, suffered a loss when linemate Jason Aguilar re-injured himself and had to exit.

“That hurts a little bit with his speed and his ability to assist and work off Mo Mo,” Kalick said. “But we should have other guys to step up.”

Sesay wasn’t nearly as dangerous in the second half, partly because he was dogged by Anthony Tweh but also because Kalick thought he was being asked to do too much.

“We’re passing balls to him where he has to come back to the ball and you need to play him through a little bit and get his speed going,” the coach said. “We need to support, but we stand around and watch. He can’t go one on seven, it’s impossible.”

After Joseph gave Nottingham a 1-0 lead two minutes into play, Sesay launched a laser from the left flank to tie it. He then converted a penalty kick after a handball in the box to make it 2-1 before halftime.

Just over four minutes into the second half, Mark Pazmino upped it to 3-1 and Nottingham seemed to be staggering.

“We just took a breath, got our composure back and pulled it together as a team,” said deStasio, who moments later took a feed from Iloka and converted to tie it.

“I thought I had the open shot so I just let it rip and it went in,’ he said.

With 25:28 left, Joseph slid a pass to an unmarked deStasio in front, who calmly banged it home.

Joseph broke the play down to pure simplicity.

“I saw him open,” the sophomore said. “That’s why I passed it to him.”

From that point, both teams had some chances in a pretty wide open game, but could not convert as Mike Braender finally beat Hightstown for the first time in his six years as Northstars coach.

“They played a good game, they’re a tough team, we knew that coming in,” Braender said. “It’s a conference game for us. We talked about that before the game. We had a really good practice, we were working on things yesterday that we put into the game today.

“We were obviously a little flat at the end of the first half. To come out and go down by another one real quick, we just showed the composure to come back against a team like that.”

Having a dual threat at forward didn’t hurt either.