Der­rel "Zoom Zoom" Gar­cia scored once, and goal­keep­er Thane De­venish made a dou­ble save to put St Bene­dict's Col­lege in­to the fi­nal of the Sec­ondary Schools Foot­ball League's Co­ca-Co­la Na­tion­al In­ter­col boys' fi­nal with a 4-3 win over Sig­nal Hill Sec­ondary School from the penal­ty spot on Fri­day.

The South­ern­ers, via the win, main­tained their un­beat­en run this sea­son, and will now face Fa­ti­ma Col­lege in the fi­nal on Thurs­day (De­cem­ber 5).

Gar­cia, at the heart of a reg­is­tra­tion is­sue that could ren­der their ef­forts this sea­son null and void, again showed up as ear­ly as in the open­ing third minute from a ball that set him un­marked in­side the Sig­nal Hill penal­ty area and he struck it pow­er­ful­ly in­to the roof of the net for a 1-0 St Bene­dict's ad­van­tage.

The goal did not come as a sur­prise to gap­ing fans at the Ato Boldon Sta­di­um in Bal­main, Cou­va as the South­ern­ers were ex­pect­ed to win the match eas­i­ly. How­ev­er, the To­bag­o­ni­ans set­tled in the mo­ments that fol­lowed and of­fered at­tacks of their own.

St Bene­dict's, hav­ing se­cured the South Zone In­ter­col ti­tle from the penal­ty spot last week, en­joyed the po­si­tion of as­cen­dan­cy which saw them come close to their sec­ond goal in the 41st minute. Gar­cia, the tar­get of most of his team's pass­es in at­tack, got the edge of a ball that bounced awk­ward­ly around the Sig­nal Hill goal area, and be­fore the To­bag­o­ni­ans could have cleared, a snap-shot from Gar­cia struck the cross­bar with goal­keep­er Ron­dell Mar­celle to­tal­ly beat­en.

The teams moved to the break with St Bene­dict's lead­ing 1-0 but then Sig­nal Hill forced a cou­ple of free kicks, but Em­manuel Wright, who is usu­al­ly dan­ger­ous from the set play, failed to get the ball past the St Bene­dict's cus­to­di­an.

How­ev­er, with the match head­ing to the end, a foul on Wright in the St Bene­dict's penal­ty area forced ref­er­ee Khrys­tal Sobers to point to the penal­ty spot in the 90+5 minute. Wright then placed the ball per­fect­ly out of the reach of De­von­ish for the 1-1 re­sult at the end of reg­u­la­tion time.

The teams then went to a penal­ty shoot-out when De­von­ish saved Mick­el Watkins and Kyle James' at­tempts while St Bene­dict's, up to that point had a per­fect record to win, 4-3.

The fi­nal will be at the Ato Boldon Sta­di­um on Thurs­day at 5 pm, fol­low­ing the girls fi­nal at 3 pm. The girls semi­fi­nals are on Sun­day (De­cem­ber 1) be­tween San Juan North Sec­ondary and St Joseph’s Con­vent Port-of-Spain at San Juan North and Mir­a­cle Min­istries Pen­te­costal High School ver­sus Pleas­antville Sec­ondary at Lewis Street. Both match­es start at 3.30 pm.