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GREENSBORO - By definition,
Messiah College already had its savior. So Nick Blossey will settle for Man of
the Year.

            Blossey, who hadn't played in 28 days, came off the bench
to stop all three penalty kicks he faced Saturday and elevate the Falcons to
their sixth NCAA Division III soccer championship - all of them in this decade.
The Falcons prevailed over Stevens Institute of Technology after the teams played
110 minutes to a 1-1 drawn and coach Dave Brandt made the theoretically risky
decision to go to his backup.

            "I was glad I wasn't facing my own team," said Blossey, a
senior who waited behind starter Jared Clugston, who hadn't given up a goal in
five NCAA tournament games before Saturday. "We had been training for this kind
of thing. Some people think you can't practice for PKs, but you can."

            Messiah became the first program to win a half-dozen
Division III championships. The Falcons had been tied with UNCG, which won five
of them in a six-year span of the 1980s before moving up in classification.

            "The first time I mentioned it was right before the game,"
said Brant, 246-25-14 in 12 years on the job. "I said that I hoped it would
happen at some point and this team could decide if it happened today or not. I
think it's a cool thing for the program, obviously."

            The Falcons scored off a free kick in the third minute,
but the Ducks, making their first appearance in the title game, regrouped and
forced overtime when Jeremy Lippel slammed home a rebound with 10:02 left in
regulation.

            By that point, Brandt had made the decision to switch to
Blossey, who is especially proficient at educated guesses on penalty-kick
locations. So the backup went with an assistant coach behind a temporary trailer
and tried his hand at a few warm-ups. Every so often, he peeked around the trailer
and looked at the action of overtime.

When
he swatted away the first two Duck kicks and Messiah converted its first two,
the sixth title was imminent. Blossey made a dive to his right for the third
save, and Nick Thompson scored in the baseball equivalent of the top of the
fourth inning to end it.

"Tough
way to go out," Ducks midfielder Peter Montalvo said, "but making three saves
is pretty big. I don't mind that it went to PKs. There has to be a winner
eventually."

A
half-hour after it had ended, Messiah midfielder Geoff Pezon still hadn't put on a sweatshirt.

"I'm just so excited, I really don't care," he said.

Contact
Rob Daniels at 373-7028 or rob.daniels@news-record.com