WOODBURY— Success breeds success–or in the case of Nonnewaug girls and boys soccer–success has brought a spike in freshmen additions. Within the Region-14 community soccer is such a popular sport for both boys and girls with a growing number of players both teams are growing rapidly in numbers of participants.
Boys soccer has gained 11 new freshmen to their program while the girls soccer team has acquired 13 new freshmen.
“I think it’s great to have a lot of young players joining the program because it sets us up for future success,” says assistant boys soccer coach Joshua Kornblut. “We have some freshmen who right off the bat or I think are going to be integral in our success this year so allowing them to play, work with and kind of grow with the program I think we’ll just help us in the long run.”
Having such a young team to build off of is setting the team up for success in the future.
The boys soccer team graduated 12 seniors last year, many of whom were starters.
“We had 12 seniors on the team last year, which is larger than the normal number. Those guys left a big void when they graduated,” says head boys soccer coach Toby Denman, who, amid his 20th season as head coach, has relied on a younger group of players this season . “There’s some people getting an opportunity this year that didn’t really have a chance last year at the varsity level, because there were so many people from then.”
From last year to this year the younger players have evolved into starting varsity players to fill the void that the class of 25’ left.
“We have a few sophomores who saw virtually no varsity time last year and now they’re starters and they’re doing a great job,” says Kornblut. “So I think it’s going to really solidify our program for the next few years.”
Along with boys soccer solidifying their program for the next few years girls soccer is also set for the future.
“We had a solid core of girls coming in to play,” says head girls soccer coach Adam Brutting. “This year, with 13 [players] it just makes the future bright and they came in with good soccer knowledge.”
Having so many girls joining the soccer team they created a thing called senior squads. This is helping new players have a friendly face.
“I think a lot of people will join soccer because everyone’s a family on our team and we all support each other and the chemistry is really good,” says sophomore Gianna Perugini who was a member of last years state tournament team. “I also feel like our coaches have a big part that would have something called senior squads in which each senior is assigned a squad throughout each grade and I feel like that brings the team closer and it’s also a guide mostly for freshmen to navigate through high school and to navigate through this next chapter in their life.”
Both boys and girls soccer teams are set for the foreseeable future, gaining more and more underclassmen each year.
