Wave rallies against Sockers to pull within 1 win of MASL championship

• The Milwaukee Wave defeated the San Diego Sockers 7-2 to force a decisive championship game.
• Milwaukee scored seven unanswered goals, with Alex Sanchez scoring the game-winner in the third quarter.
• The Sockers played without three players who were suspended for disciplinary reasons and another who was kicked out of the league.

After rallying to win its first two series in the MASL playoffs following losses in Game 1, the Milwaukee Wave will have an opportunity to do it one more time.

This time the championship is on the line.

The Wave scored seven unanswered goals – albeit three of them into an untended net in the final 78 seconds – in beating the short-handed San Diego Sockers 7-2 on April 24 at Frontwave Arena in Oceanside, California.

Midfielder Alex Sanchez scored what proved to be the winning goal midway through the third quarter when he booted the ball over the Sockers wall on a restart from the top of arc.

Game 2 box sore: Wave 7, Sockers 2

“I think just a change in attitude and mentality,” Wave goalkeeper Jerry Perez said in a television interview regarding the difference in Game 2 compared to the 5-4 loss in the series opener. “Them coming to our home and just taking over at our place, we wanted to do the same coming to theirs.

“The fans also, amazing atmosphere. That’s what a final’s all about.”

In advancing past the Empire Strykers and Baltimore Blast, the Wave had to win a 15-minute knockout game at home, but this time it is on the road and will have to prevail over a full 60 minutes April 27 on San Diego’s blue turf.

For Game 3, San Diego will get back three players who were out for disciplinary actions related to incidents two nights earlier in Milwaukee.

Sockers captain Cesar Cerda was given a red card after the game, resulting in an automatic one-game suspension, for kicking Wave defender Tony Walls in the groin. Midfielder Luiz Morales and forward Jesus Pacheco were suspended for their involvement in a clash with spectators at the UWM Panther Arena that followed Cerda’s kick and subsequent shoving between the teams. Additionally, Stefan Mijatovic was kicked out of the league for his role in the postgame skirmish with specators.

While the Wave escaped Game 1 with no players being punished, it did suffer a significant setback in warmups when Oscar Flores, the league’s newcomer of the year and Milwaukee’s playoff point-scoring leader, went down with a quadriceps injury.

The Sockers got goals from two unlikely sources, defenders Ben Ramin and Sean Callahan, in the second quarter. Ramin’s goal was his first of the season and Callahan’s his fifth.

But two of the Wave’s most familiar names knotted the score in a span of 30 seconds straddling halftime. Forty-two-year-old forward Ian Bennett took a cross off the wall and buried it with 20 seconds left in the first half, and 39-year-old Max Ferdinand scored a run down the right side just 10 seconds after the second-half kickoff.

Sanchez’s winner came 9:34 into the third quarter on a ball neatly tucked into the upper right corner. Wave rookie forward Lucas Nesthaus, a Pewaukee native who played for Marquette University in the fall, added insurance at 6:17 of the fourth on a breakaway with a bicycle kick assist from Cesar Correa.

Perez got plenty of help from the posts and crossbar in keeping San Diego off the board.

Then Javier Steinwascher scored a long roller after the Sockers had pulled Chris Toth for a sixth attacker, and Correa connected twice into the empty net.

The Wave will be chasing its eight title after most recently winning the MASL’s Ron Newman Cup in 2019. San Diego is trying to win it 17^th championship across various indoor leagues, its third in the MASL and its first since 2022.