Ricardo Makyn/Staff Photographer
Calabar players celebrate their exciting 6-5 penalty shootout victory over STATHS in the quarter-finals of the Walker Cup KO competition at Spanish Town Prison Oval yesterday.

Jermaine Lannaman, Gleaner Writer

TITLE HOLDERS Calabar High and Jamaica College (JC) advanced to the semi-finals of the ISSA/Pepsi/Digicel Walker Cup Knockout competition after registering penalty shoot-out and 1-0 victories over St. Andrew Technical (STATHS) and Kingston College (KC), respectively, at the Spanish Town Prison Oval yesterday.

Calabar, who are seeking to become the first team to win the coveted Cup back-to-back, got the better of STATHS 6-5 on penalties after both teams had played to a 0-0 draw at the end of regulation and extra time, while JC, who lost to the boys from Red Hills Road last year in the final, clipped KC on Deandre Brown's 17th-minute free-kick.

The duo, in winning, joined Excelsior and Eltham in the semi-finals, which will be played on Tuesday at the Constant Spring playing field. Excelsior will play Eltham in the first semi-final while, in the feature, Calabar will tackle JC, in what will be a repeat of last year's final showdown.

In the first match at Prison Oval, Calabar and STATHS played end-to-end football, but in the end there was little fireworks as neither team was able to make a breakthrough in normal time.

The game then went down to penalty kicks. STATHS went first, and after the first two kicks, led 2-1 after Calabar's Thompson missed their second attempt. However, on STATHS third attempt they missed, which created an opportunity for the green-and-black standard bearers to get back into the match and, wanting to defend their title, they duly obliged by converting their remaining kicks.

Fight and heart

In the second match, JC, who played with a lot of fight and heart, defeated a KC team which looked lacklustre and lacked an influential midfield player.

The boys from Old Hope Road came away with the victory after Brown, who had a standout game, netted a curling left-foot free kick from about 40 yards out, which beat KC's custodian, Mark Garvey, all ends up, and nestled into the roof of the net.

"JC wanted it more than us and that is what cost us the match today," said Wayne Fairclough, coach of KC.