READING THE GAME: Princeton High boys soccer star Thomas Reid controls the ball during a game last fall. Senior defender Reid has emerged as the leader of the PHS backline. The Little Tigers kick off the 2018 season when they play at WW/P-South on September 6. (Photo by Frank Wojciechowski)
By Bill Alden
Last fall, the Princeton High boys soccer team added a special chapter to the program’s rich history.
Catching fire after a rough start, PHS won the Central Jersey Group 4 title and advanced to the state finals where it fell to powerhouse Kearny to finish the fall with a 17-6 record -1.
Despite heavy graduation losses, PHS head coach Wayne Sutcliffe believes his current crop of players has what it takes to continue the team’s winning tradition.
“We have a good spirit in the camp and in the group; we have some very good young players who fully understand the situation and standards of PHS men’s soccer,” said Sutcliffe, who enters his 22nd season at the helm of the program.
“They are showing good signs of being able to do their best to maintain this high standard. We benefit from it.
PHS will feature two of these good young players in sophomore forwards Nick Petruso and Ian Pompliano.
“Nick will be one of the forwards, he really improved last year,” Sutcliffe said of Petruso, who scored key goals for PHS in the playoffs last fall.
“He spent the first two thirds of the season trying to get used to the demands of it all at this level; Thanks to him for doing as well as he did. Nick is going to have to find a way to score goals and find winners and important goals.
“Ian is a good hold-up forward; he has a good left foot. He has good size and is pretty good in the air. Those are the two main guys right now.
A quintet of seniors, Atticus Lynch, Grant Luther, Josh Nieman, Sebastian Ratzan and Van Lal Ven, are among the important players in the PHS midfield.
“We have Atticus Lynch and Grant Luther in the middle,” Sutcliffe said. “Josh Nieman and Sebastian Ratzan are sidelined. Van Lal Ven is another outside midfielder; he’s an instrumental guy.
New faces are emerging as key players for the Little Tigers in midfield.
“We have Will Novak as an attacking midfielder, he is exceptional,” added Sutcliffe, noting that Novak played for the Princeton Football Club (PFC) Boca U-16 (2002) men’s team which won its age group at the National American Club Cup. in July.
“He’s more of a playmaker, but he can do everything. We have another guy on this Boca team, Noah LaPoint, who is a central midfielder and he has done well to force his way through. He had quality minutes. We have another guy in midfield, Matt Cincotta, a central midfielder, who is a rising junior.
On defense, senior Thomas Reid is doing very well. “Reid was the most improved player on the team last year; he was the only junior in the starting lineup, everyone was a senior,” said Sutcliffe, whose defensive unit will also include senior Alec Korsah as well as sophomore Brendan Coffee, the freshman Myles Ryan and the Parker brothers, sophomores Ethan and Dylan.
“He had an excellent second half; he picked up where he left off. Reid is great at everything he does: the way he carries himself with confidence, his patience with young guys and his competitiveness.
There is good competition at goaltenders as PHS looks to fill the void left by the graduation of star Patrick Jacobs.
“We have three guards, Jared Bell, a sophomore, Spencer Katz, a junior, and our senior Josh Pletcher,” Sutcliffe said.
“We have confidence in all three of them, they work hard for each other and challenge each other for the position. This will be a season-long situation where they will be competing against each other. »
Although the Little Tigers don’t have a unit full of seniors, Sutcliffe doesn’t see any decline in skills on the field.
“We don’t have a big senior class but there’s a lot of quality and we have a sophomore class where even though they’re just sophomores, they’re not inexperienced,” Sutcliffe said.
“They played a lot of football, they had a good first season. They are all club players. We had a great spring in the weight room with them and we trained all summer. Old students come back and play fetch games.
In Sutcliffe’s opinion, taking care of the basics around the goal and maintaining a winning mentality will lead to another good fall for PHS.
“The key is not to abandon cheap goals, to keep as many clean sheets as possible; we need to get better every week at maintaining possession and really refining our attack and restarting,” Sutcliffe said.
“The most important thing, I would say, is the resiliency of the senior class. If something goes wrong or we have a bad run, never lose confidence because that is simply not acceptable in Princeton boys soccer. It was never part of the culture.
