By Alex Frazier
Boys soccer or girls soccer? That’s a decision several coaches had to make this year, since this was the last year for spring soccer in District One.
Next year the Suburban One League will play in the fall. By PIAA rules, the SOL could have waited to make the shift until the 2012 season as districts 11, 3 and 2 are doing, but the league opted to make the move this year.
The change has made it difficult for those who coached both boys and girls. Some girls coaches were also assistant boys coaches, and vice versa. Council Rock South boys coach Allan Nicholl was assistant to South girls coach Tim Keddie, who was Nicholl’s assistant in the fall. Bensalem girls coach Lew Mladjen was also a boys’ assistant coach. Wissahickon’s Stuart Malcolm, who coaches the boys in the fall, was Chris McDaniel’s assistant in the spring.
In another case, Cheltenham boys coach Nick Zegestowsky refereed girls’ games in the spring.
He has been officiating since he was 16. Zegestowsky refs as many as 300 games in a year from girls to men’s, high school to college and club, indoors to outdoors.
“It’s a passion of mine,” he admits. “It’s almost like a second career.”
Even though there won’t be spring soccer next year, Zegestowsky still plans to ref it in the fall.
“I’ll be leaving a game at Cheltenham almost every day and practice every day to go referee at night, because of the volume of games that are out there,” he said. “I already have 15 matches on my schedule. The fall will be extremely busy for me. I’ll take anything and everything (assignor) Sue can throw my way because I love it that much, just as long as I’m home two or three nights a week.”
The following is a list of girls coaches that will not be returning next season (as of now):
Mike Freed—The Quakertown coach will continue coaching girls, but it will be at Upper Perkiomen. It was a natural choice for Freed, a 1978 Upper Perk grad who was one of two coaches that started the Valley Soccer Club, not to mention the fact that he lives three-quarters of a mile from the field and works just a half-mile away.
“I’m coming back to may roots,” said Freed. “It is a good fit for me.”
Freed will be missed not only as a coach but also for his service to the league as Continental Conference representative and SOL statistician. You could always get up-to-date standings and game scores from Freed.
C.B. West assistant Mike Koch will be taking over for Freed next fall.
Paul Duddy—Duddy is one of those who coached both boys and girls. In the fall he coaches North Penn and in the spring Central Bucks East.
Duddy said it was a hard decision, but living in Hatfield and having coached at North Penn longer helped influence his choice.
“It was the obvious choice,” he said.
But he will miss coaching the East girls.
“I enjoyed working with the girls at C.B. East, their athletic director John Reading was just a great guy and there was a lot of support from the administration and the parents were real nice,” said Duddy. “My druthers would be to continue doing both.”
Duddy coached at East for six years.
He will still keep busy in the spring without girls soccer as he also coaches the U-14 Montgomery boys team.
“I was doing all three teams, so now I’ll be back down to two,” he said.
Neil Johnson—Besides coaching the North Penn girls in the spring, Johnson was the head women’s coach at Gwynedd Mercy College in the fall. He has opted to remain at the college level.
“It’s kind of sad,” he said. “I enjoyed it and it gave me a chance to get into college. It’s ironic that I now have to choose between college and high school. I chose college because that’s what’s best for me.”
Johnson coached the North Penn girls for seven years, compiling 95 wins. His teams made districts every year, once going to the finals and twice to the semifinals, and he coached the first North Penn team to make it to the state semifinals.
“Overall it was a great experience,” he said.
Johnson will miss the opportunity to compete against all the girls teams in District One.
“From the girls’ perspective, it’s a good thing,” he said. “It will become more of a state championship. It’s not about the coaches. It’s about the players.”
James Barry—Barry, who was the head girls’ coach at William Tennent and the assistant boys’ coach, has decided to leave coaching altogether.
“I’m taking a break from high school soccer,” he said. “It was a tough decision. There’s a lot of time commitments with three young children (six, three and 11 months).”
His six-year old is planning to play travel soccer in the fall.
“My wife needs an extra hand in getting all the kids where they want to be,” said Barry, “and I want to be there to watch my son play soccer.”
Barry coached the Tennent girls for three years, winning the Continental Conference and finishing second in District One his first year. He said he was somewhere around 41-22 for his three years.
“I’m pretty confident I’ll be back into it sometime in the future,” he said.
Rich Reice—Reice coached the Neshaminy girls for 11 years. He cited two reasons for staying with the boys next fall. There’s a good possibility that he may be able to coach his son, whom he had coached in age group soccer and is now considering switching from football, where he was the kicker. Obviously, he can still do that and play soccer.
The main reason he stayed with the boys is because he has been coaching them longer—15 years.
The decision wasn’t easy. In one respect, he wanted to stay with the girls because next year the competition would be new. On the schedule next year are powerhouses Downingtown East and West and Villa Joseph Marie.
“It’s going to be quite exciting for them to go out and play that competition and see how they measure up,” said Reice. “That will be fun. It was tough to say no to that. It was one of the most difficult decisions I’ve ever had.”
In his 11 years with the Redskin girls, Reice was 159-57-24.
Chris Hill – Hill coached the Abington girls for the last four years with the past season being his best. The Galloping Ghosts finished sixth in the National Conference with a 7-9-1 overall mark and 4-9-1 in the SOL.
Hill also coached the Mount St. Joseph’s girls team in the fall. When he found out the SOL was moving to the fall, he resigned at the Mount after the 2008 season.
Unfortunately, he didn’t get a chance to coach Abington in the fall, because he needed the time to devote to the family day camp. He even gave up his commitments to club soccer. He had been coaching club and high school soccer since the early 1990s when his sons were growing up.
”I have a lot of personal demands on my time, and I have to take care of them first,” he said. “I’m saddened I’m not going to be there for one fall to see how all that will play out. That would have been very interesting. I might have been able to play my old team at Mount St. Joe’s.”
Sportsmanship? Those of you who saw the score of the Dallastown-Franklin Towne Charter game from the first round of the state tournament might have been as repulsed as I was.
15-0? Sounds like a football score.
There’s no room for that kind of humiliation in high school sports—perhaps even at any level.
“Any coach that would do that to another team of high school-age players and another coach is an idiot,” said C.B. East/North Penn coach Paul Duddy. “That’s a disgrace. There’s no place for something like that in high school sports.”
What’s the point? Did Dallastown coach Barry Barbush have some kind of grudge against Franklin Towne Charter? Why would he run up the score on a relatively new program?
From chat on pennlive.com, it appears as though Barbush made some effort to keep the score down by playing his bench, but as anyone who’s coached knows, when a sub gets on the field, she is naturally eager to score. If you move players around in positions, such as moving defenders or a keeper forward, they are also challenged to put the ball in the net as they otherwise rarely get the opportunity.
Quakertown coach Mike Freed wasn’t so quick to criticize.
“You find ways to move things around on your team, but if an opportunity presents itself to score, the point of the game is scoring, and if you’ve got the ball six yards out on your foot and instead of shooting at goal, you pass the ball back to keep possession and not score, that is making more of a mockery of the game than winning 15-0,” he said.
But there are other ways to control the score, such as setting a number of completed passes before a player can shoot or removing players from the field.
According to Freed, who has been taking teams abroad for many years, running the score up in Europe is not considered unsportsmanlike. The purpose in soccer is to score goals and making an effort not to score is as humiliating as scoring too many.
“It’s a completely different mentality,” said Freed. “They’ll get more upset with you if you stop trying to play the game than if you continue to score. That’s a little foreign to us.”
Some people on pennlive commented that Franklin Towne Charter should have declined to enter the tournament. But if a team qualified by placing second in its district, no matter how poor the district is, why should it not compete?
Best of the best—Congratulations to this year’s conference MVPs.
National Conference—Lauren Heath
Lauren Heath was coach Tim Keddie’s secret weapon this year.
For her first two years at Council Rock South, Heath played in the back. As a junior she started the transition to forward, but played sparingly, as she was recovering from a hip injury.
“She can play anywhere on the field,” said Keddie. “She’ll go at players. We knew how good she was, but other teams didn’t.”
Heath finished the season with 26 goals and 12 assists and is one reason why the Golden Hawks won the National Conference and made it to the state semifinals.
“We knew at the beginning of the season that she would be a force to reckon with,” said Keddie. “She accepted her role and came through in spades.”
Next year Heath will play at Temple.
“I’m proud of her,” said Keddie. “She fought through a lot of adversity.”
Continental Conference—Sarah Senoyuit
Sarah Senoyuit was one big reason why Pennridge won its first Continental Conference title this year.
“I was extremely surprised,” she said of winning the award. “I’ve been happy with the way I’ve played in the past, but this year I felt like I had a solid year.”
Senoyuit will be off to the University of Dayton on Aug. 4 to begin the next stage of her soccer career.
“I’m absolutely terrified,” she said. “The caliber of play is going to be so much different. I’m excited but at the same time terrified.”
She is slated to play defensive midfield.
Senoyuit already has more homework to prepare for soccer than she did during the regular school year.
“I have so many packets and workouts,” she said.
She’s received a packet for lifting, one for conditioning and another for technical skills.
Part of her preparations will be playing club ball for FC Bucks, participating in the state cup and in a U-20 league.
“We’ll be playing right up to pre-season,” she said.
American Conference—Emily Marvill
What’s so marvelous about Upper Dublin’s Emily Marvill is that she is only a junior.
Not only was she the conference’s MVP, but she was also an all-state selection.
“I was very surprised,” she said. “It was a great way to end the season. It was also exciting just because we are switching seasons next year, so we get to turn around right away and play again.”
On a team that dealt with several key injuries this year, especially down the stretch, Marvill stepped up to carry her teammates.
“Emily took up the reins,” said coach John Topper. “When we needed a spark out there, she was the one that was giving it to us. She scored some timely goals for us.”
Marvill led the team in scoring with 13 goals.
“I’ve never been one to worry about the goals I’ve had,” said Marvill. “This year it was different because I knew I was one of the older kids on the team and I knew that means I had to step up in certain situations. A lot of those (goals) came from big games. I’m really proud of it.”
Topper used her mainly as forward, but would occasionally move her to outside midfield.
“No matter who we were playing, she pinned the defense back, gave them trouble and opened up some space for our central players to operate with the ball,” he said.
Marvill made her presence felt even when she was a freshman.
“She was able to step on and be an impact player,” said Topper. “Between last year and this year she did step up and make herself one of the premier players in the league.”
Marvill is also a natural leader.
“She played through a number of injuries this year,” said Topper. “When we see her out there injured and working the way she has been, it sets a good example.”
Over the summer Marvill will play for FC Bucks, a team she just joined last fall.
“It’s one of the best teams I’ve played for,” said Marvill. “It’s a great experience.”
She is in the midst of state cups and will play a few college showcases before pre-season starts in August.
Marvill is also starting to look at colleges. She plans on majoring in some aspect of medicine like a physician’s assistant, nurse, biologist or physical therapist.
She carries a 4.14 grade point average with honors classes in English and history and an AP biology course.
With such a successful junior year behind her, Marvill will be looking for even bigger and better things next fall.
“We have a lot of good freshmen coming up next year and we’ll have a lot more time as a team to work things out before the season,” she said.
2010 Suburban One Dream Team
Tierny Carraba, Springfield
Sophie Eiger, North Penn
Lauren Heath, Council Rock South
Brianna Hires, Neshaminy
Lindsay Horst, Central Bucks West
Mary Kate Callahan, Council Rock South
Melanie Keer, Central Bucks South
Jess Levy, Council Rock South
Emily Marvill, Upper Dublin
Mary Kate McCrea, Central Bucks West
Stevi Parker, Pennridge
Molly Phillips, Pennsbury
Ashley Saylor, Central Bucks South
Sarah Senoyuit, Pennridge
Chris Vollrath, Council Rock South
SOL Final Top Five
1. Council Rock South
2. Central Bucks South
3. Pennridge
4. Central Bucks West
5. Neshaminy and Pennsbury
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