WAL­TER AL­IBEY

San Juan North Sec­ondary was crowned east zone cham­pi­on of the Co­ca Co­la In­ter­Col on Wednes­day when it de­feat­ed Trin­i­ty Col­lege East 5-4 from the penal­ty spot at the Lar­ry Gomes Sta­di­um, Mal­abar, Ari­ma.

The boys from Bourg Mu­la­tresse shook off their dis­ap­point­ment in the Pre­mier Di­vi­sion to fire five per­fect­ly struck penal­ties past the Trin­i­ty cus­to­di­an in the fi­nal af­ter the match re­mained tied 1-1 at the end of reg­u­la­tion time.

But they had to come from be­hind af­ter de­fend­er Eli­jah Gar­cia hand­ed Trin­i­ty strik­er Tyrique Suther­land the ball un­marked in the 62nd minute in the area. Suther­land's pow­er­ful low dri­ve took a de­flec­tion off an­oth­er de­fend­er Kyle Thomas be­fore beat­ing Em­manuel John in the San Juan goal.

San Juan, de­spite their dom­i­nance there­after, had to wait un­til late in the match to get the equalis­er, which came off the boot of Chris­t­ian Mitchell.

In the kicks that fol­lowed, San Juan was per­fect with ef­forts from Re­nal­do Boyce, Isa­iah Chase, Ka­reem John, Ma­lik Far­ri­er and Jer­ry Mor­ris all go­ing in, to spark wild cel­e­bra­tions.

Moe said af­ter­wards he was par­tic­u­lar­ly pleased with his play­ers for win­ning, not once but three ti­tles in con­sec­u­tive years.

"I had to make a num­ber of changes in the match, par­tic­u­lar­ly when the goal was scored on us. I changed our for­mat from 4:4:2 to 3:5:1 in an ef­fort to get back the goal and when we did, we changed back to 4:4:2 and it worked for us," Moe said.

The win sends San Juan North straight to the se­mi-fi­nals of the Na­tion­al In­ter­Col where it will face the win­ner of the To­ba­go zone, to be con­test­ed to­day be­tween Spey­side High and Sig­nal Hill at Mt Pleas­ant Recre­ation Ground from 3.30 pm.

Moe said re­gard­less of which team they will face in the semi­fi­nals, he is con­fi­dent his boys will come out on the win­ning side.