CRHS 2013 BOYS SOCCER: The Final Word

One of the challenges of High School sports is that you basically have a new team every year.  Typically, the starters graduate, and for the most part it’s a new team from season to season.  For 2013 CRHS Boys Soccer team, this season was a tale of three teams within one year.  The ‘full strength’ team was 4-0-1 in the first 5 games.  The ‘nearly full strength’ team was 1-1-0 at the end of the season.  The ‘broke-down’ team was 0-9-0 during a painful stretch in the middle of the year.  Combined, they finished 5-10-1, and did not qualify for the Class S state tournament.  History will record that as a poor performance.  But we know the real story.

I know that this is not the New York Times, and I know I'm not Mike Lupica, but I always tried to treat this column as a report of the games, and keep my opinion out of it.  Until today.  This column will be much more 'blog' than 'recap.'  I feel I should add another disclaimer before anyone thinks I'm trying to make this about me -- I'm not.  They're great kids and deserve their story to be told.

I stared coaching in 1999.  I became an assistant on the travel team when this year's seniors were 11 years old.  The team was coached at that time by, in my opinion, the best coach in the Coginchaug Soccer Club, Ed Alberico.  Ed's son drifted away from soccer to become an outstanding runner, so naturally Ed eventually gravitated toward his son and away from the team. I took over, Derek Cummings and Lynn Temple joined me as assistants.  At that point, we started talking to the boys about preparing to play at the High School level.  We played in leagues during the winter, spring and summer.  Year round soccer in preparation for the fall school soccer season…in preparation for this fall.  It was in those years that the core of this year’s CRHS Varsity team started really coming together.  Working to improve their individual skills to make the team better.  Travel soccer is different than the High School game.  In Travel soccer, the kids pay a fee to the club, so everyone plays.  There are no tryouts, no cuts (and hopefully) no favoritism.  My philosophy was not to focus on winning, but on improving.  If we improve as players and coaches, the wins will come.   And improve we did.  We won two division titles and had an undefeated season.  Two years ago they were the first Under-16 team to win the top South Central Connecticut A-Division in recent Coginchaug Soccer Club history.

The boys trained hard this summer as their senior season approached.  They solidified their bond in an intense week long training camp the week before the season officially started. 

That’s a lot of back-history, but the point is that these seniors (Jeff Cummings, Michael Decker, Luke Fowler, Tyler Kovacs, Alex Markoski, Alex Preneta, Jeff Peracchio and Jack Temple) are a special group.  They are good kids.  They are a team.  And on the first day of training for this, their decisive season, they were firing on all cylinders, and they were ready to take on the league.  They had commanding victories in 4 of the first 5 games of the year, and had a come-back tie against a Class-L team (2 Divisions above Class-S CRHS).  They were on top of the table looking very dangerous before the walls came crashing down.  Only 2 of the starting seniors mentioned above played in all of the next 9 games.  One missed them all, one missed 7, the others missed games over that stretch, primarily due to injuries.

A team is like a puzzle.  A coach takes the pieces and tries to fit them together with the right combination of skill, positioning and chemistry.  These boys had it locked in tightly. 

After game 5, the puzzle fell apart.  It was heartbreaking to watch. 

Not to take anything away from the boys who took their places, they tried their hardest.  But the fact is – size and experience at this level of soccer is paramount.  And this league is too strong for an unbalanced team to be able to compete.

So many times during this season I wanted to comment about how emotionally painful it was for the players, coaches and parents.  It got to the point where after the boys lost 8-0 to Valley Regional, all I could muster was one sentence, shoe-horned in at the end of a recap of a girl's game.  "The CRHS boys lost to Valley on the road on Monday." is all I could safely put on paper that day.

Despite the 9 straight losses, the strong start still had the team in playoff contention.  The pieces were slowly returning to the puzzle, the JV call-ups were gaining crucial experience and confidence, and the level of play was returning.  Still, they needed 2 wins from the final 3 games to quality.

The team traveled to Cromwell for a night game against the eventual 2013 State Champions.  With all but 1 senior playing, they put on a masterful performance, losing only to an Oscar worthy flop (an unfortunate part of soccer) and resulting penalty kick.  They lost the match but completely regained their confidence.

Coach Cap has been at Coginchaug for 6 seasons.  He’s faced Valley Regional for 2 regular season games per year, and at least once in the post-season, they are always a top contending team and were a Class-S Final Four team this year.  By my calculation Coginchaug was 0-13 against them.  The 2013 CRHS Varsity team was once again whole for this match.  Valley took an early lead, but it didn’t phase Coginchaug.  They leveled the score before the half and broke it open in a 2 minute span early in the second half to stun Valley and keep their playoff aspirations alive.

The season came down to the final game – a rematch with Class-L Foran of Milford.  Sadly, the team was bitten again by the injury bug and a senior defensemen was a game-time scratch from the line-up.  CRHS fought hard.  After being down 1-0, CRHS fought back to take the lead twice.  Foran came back to tie each time and ultimately won in double overtime.

The season was over without a single post-game match for a team that could have won it all.

Don’t trust the biased opinion of a team dad?  How about Coach Cap’s comments after the Valley win, “The team showed great character, to go down a goal early and come back shows what we’re really made of.  It was the first game in a long time that the lads put everything together and dug down deep for the victory.  We got healthy for about 60 minutes of today's match; having both Jeff and Tyler back really showed what type of team we could have been all year, it gave the team a huge mental boost.  They did what leaders and seniors should do.”  Off the record, coaches from Valley and Foran commented on how strong the team was at full strength.  In addition, although they played less than half of the teams games, the league recognized Co-Captains Jeff Cummings and Tyler Kovacs bestowing all-conference honors.   (Co-Captain Senior Michael Decker also earned all conference recognition.)

Need more back-up?  How about some numbers:  During the 4-0-1 streak, the team scored 12 goals and had a +8 goal differential.  Tyler had 6 of the 12, and held the team lead until Alec Bogen’s amazing hat-trick against Foran in the final match put him one over for the scoring title.  The team scored 3 total goals in the next 9 games and dropped the differential to a staggering -26.  When ‘nearly-healthy’ in the final 2 games they netted 6, doubling the tally from that crippling 9 game streak.  In total, 18 of 21 goals scored came in the 7 games at the front and back end of the season, while 37 of the 47 total goals allowed were during that middle stretch.

Are you with me now?

The final result of this game broke everyone’s heart.  So much hope and potential was taken away from them.  The point of this article is not to focus on that, but remind the boys of what they had accomplished together.  Not just this year, but in all their years together. 

When the 8 seniors and the rest of the starting Varsity played they never lost.

After the initial sting, there’s no reason why the players should not look back fondly on the season when they throw out the official record and remember the true story. 

I hope you will too.