Every March the Madness ensues among sports teams and the term "Cinderella" comes to light.
For the Toms River South boys ice hockey team, this March has been mad and long and improbably successful.
The Indians have been the definition of a Cinderella, as they've upset three consecutive higher seeded teams to reach the North A state championship.
"If you went back to the beginning of the season, I would've said that never in my wildest dreams would I think we'd be here," Indians' head coach Bill McKinnon said.
The Indians will play No. 3 seed Randolph, which beat Montgomery in a shootout on Wednesday night, 2-1. The Public A final will be on Saturday at 3 p.m. at Prudential Center.
Toms River South's year was full of dominant performances as the Indians closed the regular season with a 20-2-2 record, that included ties with No. 11 seeded Howell and No. 5 seed Hillsborough. However, the Indians only garnered the No. 16 seed in the Public A bracket, a slight that McKinnon used to his advantage.
"We were pretty upset when the seedings came out," he said. "We were shown no respect from that seeding. We felt we had a strong record from a good division. We told the kids 'if you want respect, you'll have to go earn it.' "The low seed was the best thing that could have happened to us."
The Indians took care of No. 17 Roxbury in the first round, but had to take on the top-seed Morris Knolls. In that game, leading scorer, Jay Malone, tallied a hat trick, which was enough for the Indians in the goal scoring department. Goaltender Geoff Hannon stopped 31 shots in the victory Toms River South was headed to the semifinals.
"Talent for talent, that team is a much more talented team than we are," McKinnon said of Morris Knolls. "But our kids know their role, embrace their role and give maximum effort and maximum focus and when we stay within our role, that is when we have our most success."
McKinnon was most impressed with his unit's ability to play defensive hockey in the Morris Knolls game. That defensive style has carried over into the Indians' other tournament games as Toms River South has allowed just eight goals in four games thus far in the tournament.
"The majority of our team is role players," he said. "But they can forecheck aggressively and play trap when they have to and they say 'I'm going to help my teammates shut them down'."
Offensively, it has been the Malone show. The junior forward has 10 goals in the tournament, all of them coming in the Indians' upset wins. Toms River South has only scored 16 goals in its four wins thus far. Teammate Todd Unger is the only other player with more than one goal in the tournament and he has two.
"We've got a couple of talented offensive players that can score in big moments," McKinnon said.
The formula worked for the Indians in their most recent win over Brick Memorial, jump ahead, play tight defensively and hold on at the end. Malone tallied three, sophomore goaltender Patrick Kearney stopped 18 shots and the Indians were the highest seed in state history to qualify for the state finals.
The Indians are now just 45 minutes away from becoming the highest seed to win the state tournament.
But not lost on McKinnon or his team is that despite the size of the building, or the caliber of the opponent, his team will still have to lace up their skates, put on their sweaters and take the same 85x200 sheet of ice they did in their previous 28 games.
"We know that nine out of 10 times that Randolph is going to beat us," McKinnon said. "But we're only playing them once...and if they give us their best effort and put us in a position to win, then we'll put an exclamation point on one of the most unbelievable seasons that I've ever seen."
