SPRINGFIELD — Entering Tuesday’s visit from Radnor, it had been six games undefeated for Springfield’s boys soccer team. Great for any team, it’s particularly an outlier in the Cougars’ recent history.
One big reason, senior co-captain and midfielder Enio Grabocka suggested, was a different, more cohesive mentality under coach Pat Heaney.
If their record doesn’t reinforce that, the masterclass offered by Radnor over 80 minutes of a 3-0 Central League victory should.
“I think the biggest thing we can take away from Radnor, honestly, is just their connection,” Grabocka said. “They seem very connected. They have a lot of team chemistry. They know how to play, they know where their striker is going to run, how to stay onside, when to play the ball. I think we have the base level of connection. I think if we can just take that next level, then we’ll prosper as a team.”
Radnor, the reigning District 1 Class 3A champion and a state semifinalist last year, is that next level. It showed early and often, even if the Raptors (5-0, 3-0 Central) are going about it a little differently in 2024.
The final score could’ve been much worse than a pair of Andrew Marino goals and one from sophomore midfielder Kohei Kirino. The Raptors hit the woodwork three times. They were denied three legitimate penalty shots, two of them stone-dead missed calls. They troubled Springfield with 12 shots on target, only six saves from a stellar Brett Rosser and three from Aiden Serock salvaging the scoreline.
That doesn’t diminish what the Cougars (6-1, 2-1) have accomplished. They entered having won three straight road games, including league contests at Ridley and Upper Darby. The six wins are the most for the Cougars in a season since reaching the PIAA Class AAA semifinal in 2015. They were 3-12 last year; five-win campaigns in 2021 and 2019 represent the high-water mark for the last decade.
Nothing that happened Tuesday against Radnor – which won 18 games last year, compared to Springfield’s 20 in the last six seasons combined – was going to erase that momentum.
“We feel, really, like a team this year, whereas other years, it hasn’t been as connected,” Grabocka said. “There’s been some gaps between communication, people getting along. I think this year we really are displaying what a team means.”
Radnor would know all about that, from a defense that allowed just two shots on target to an potent attack predicated on the forward duo of Marino and Matthew Santerian. Goalie JD Ball didn’t have to make a difficult save until the final two minutes, his only other action a two-hopped, 55-yard free kick.
By that point, Radnor had put the game away. They pressed Rosser into action 90 seconds in, a header from Jagger Holt off a Devin Karadagli feed palmed off the bar.
Rosser was equal to a short-hopped, dipping drive from 30 yards by Dean Moon in the 17th minute, but Marino was quickest to react, poking home the rebound. Santerian and Moon orchestrated a short corner in 20th, Moon’s ball looping perfectly to the late run of Kirino, fresh off the bench, to volley home with his first touch of the game.
The Raptors had ample chances to tack on a third in the first five minutes of the second half. Marino buried the rebound when Rosser saved an Arrian Fonseca shot from distance but was judged offside. Santerian sailed an open header, then Holt volleyed off the bar before Marino capitalized on an extra high bounce over a center back and past a rare moment of indecision from Rosser to complete his brace.
That sequence started when Santerian cheekily tried to chip Rosser from the kickoff. Inadvertently, it triggered what is becoming an identity for a team with a deep supply of tireless pressers up top.
“We’ve been pressing a lot in practice, just focusing on keeping them to the side and forcing them to play a long ball and then winning the second ball,” Santerian said. “… Some of their defenders weren’t really good with their feet. They’re kind of more physical players. So we could kind of tell that they wouldn’t be able to deal with us like, stepping up on them.”
Last year’s team relied on defensive structure. It kept clean sheets in 18 of 23 games, anchored by a pair of imposing athletes if not primary soccer players in All-Delcos Michael Savadove and Nate Lucchesi. Marino, also an All-Delco, is soccer-first. He leads a more skilled nucleus, from the set-piece trickery to the skill of center back Roman Rivera and deep-lying mids Fonseca and Moon to spring counterattacks.
“This year we have a really good soccer team, so we’re focused on that,” Santerian said. “But pressing is really good in high school soccer, because it creates stress on the other team. … Last year, we had a lot more size with our seniors, and a lot of our juniors from last year were soccer players. This year, our whole team is soccer players, I feel like.”
That comes with hefty rotation for coach Joe Caruolo. It meant they could bracket Grabocka, Springfield’s most dangerous player, with two or three bodies at all times to eliminate any chance of sustained pressure. Grabocka tested Ball, who replied with a diving stop, in the 78th. He also fired a promising free kick into the wall in the 21st, Radnor’s midfield flooding him on the carom to turn over possession.
Springfield has long been a few notches shy of that kind of complete performance. But it has shown this year just how much progress they’re making.
“The first 25 (minutes), I think we really held our ground,” Grabocka said. “I think the biggest thing is we just beat ourselves. A lot of the goals were just silly goals, miscommunications in the back, we broke down a little bit. I think if we can just eliminate that, we can match up to these bigger teams.”