Sports

Sports & Recreation

Kearny beats Harrison in semis, 5-1, head to finals Friday v. Union City at Red Bull Arena

Alejandro Alvarado and Hans Zoller.

By Jason Bernstein

jason@theobserver.com

Alejandro Alvarado heard a familiar question from his father, Oscar, on Friday night, Oct. 14, less than 24 hours before Kearny’s Hudson County Tournament semifinal against rival Harrison.

“The night before a game he always asks me what are your goals for the game and how many are you going to score,” Alvarado said. “I always tell him it’s either a hat trick or two (goals).”

For most players, such an answer might feel like an unrealistic expectation. For a striker such as Alvarado, such lofty goals seem always within reach.

Just a few hours after giving the prediction to his father, Alvarado turned it into reality as he recorded a hat trick in Kearny’s 5-1 victory over Harrison on Saturday in front of more than 1,500 fans at Kearny Stadium.

Kearny, the defending champions, will now face Union City in the Hudson County Tournament final on Friday, Oct. 21, at 7:30 p.m. at Red Bull Arena in Harrison.

“I always have the mentality (of scoring multiple goals),” said Alvarado, who now has five multi-goal games this season. “I knew coming into the game I knew what I wanted to score. I even told my dad that I was going to come in and score a hat trick.

“I told him last night and this morning. It’s always big playing against our neighbors next door. Just winning is a good feeling.”

Alvarado and his Kearny teammates experienced a far less familiar feeling when Harrison’s Gabriel Reis scored on a free kick just behind the 18 in the game’s eighth minute.

But rather than panic by the rare deficit, Kearny responded in swift and dramatic fashion. First, it was Alvarado’s goal on a scramble in front of the net after a restart in the 10th minute to tie it. Then, three minutes later on another restart, Johan Baez’s free kick rang off the crossbar, but Hans Zoller was there for the rebound to give the Kardinals a lead they never relinquished.

“I didn’t know it was coming to me,” Zoller said. “But I was just there and when the ball came to me, I knew I had to put it in.”

“We had a 1-0 lead and two times they came down the field, we gave them a kick and they scored on both of them,” Harrison coach Mike Rusek said. “They stepped it up after they went down 1-0.”

Nico Gomez, who had three assists, gained possession in Harrison territory, then found

Cardenas set to wrestle in Spain

By Jason Bernstein

jason@theobserver.com

As hard as it may seem to believe today, there was once a time when Jacob Cardenas disliked wrestling and hated the idea of driving from his hometown Kearny to compete at various nearby locations.

“To be honest, I didn’t like wrestling at all when I was a kid,” Cardenas recalled. “I didn’t want to go, but my dad (Roig Cardenas) made me go to practice because I had signed up and he always told me that if I started something, I had to finish it. I always forced myself to start and then I would hate it. Once I started hitting 12 or 13, I started enjoying it and having fun.

“It wasn’t even so much wrestling as much as it was being a lazy little kid having to wake up at 6 a.m. and weighing in and driving all this way to other places.”

This week, Cardenas will travel halfway across the world to compete in one of the biggest events for the sport he now loves. The Kearny native and current Cornell University standout will be representing USA Wrestling at the men’s freestyle U23 World Championships in Pontevedra, Spain, from Oct. 21-23.

Cardenas, who will compete in the 92 kg (202 pounds) weight class, qualified after he won the 92 kg title at the U23 Freestyle World Team Trials in Geneva, Ohio.

Since then, Cardenas has been training primarily at Cornell, while also spending nearly two weeks at the US Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs.

“Over the summer it’s like yeah, I’m training and it’s going to be fun when I leave in October. But once it hit October, it finally hit me that I’m flying across the world and wrestling,” said Cardenas, noting it’s the first time he will be wrestling outside of the United States. “I just had that realization recently.”

Cardenas’ training has been a little different this summer since freestyle wrestling’s format is different from collegiate wrestling, which places a greater emphasis on control and doesn’t reward “exposure” points for forcing the opponent’s shoulders to be exposed to the mat.

‘It’s definitely different training,” Cardenas said. “You can’t be rolling around on your back in freestyle or stepping out of bounds. It’s definitely a different technique and strategy.”

“I think every wrestler does freestyle at least once in their life so I think I’m ready for it.”

One of his longtime trainers, former NJSIAA champion and Kearny wrestling legend David Cordoba, knows Cardenas is ready.

“I knew he was going to do it one day,” said Cordoba. “He’s going to be one of the best wrestlers to come out of Cornell University. He doesn’t have a lot of freestyle experience, but I knew that