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Roundup
Prep 2 soccer
ends regular
season with
10 wins
The regular season came to a close for the Woodstock Academy Prep 2 soccer program and it ended with a pretty impressive win.
The Centaurs downed Hoosac School, 6-0.
The Prep 2 team finished the regular season with a 10-3-2 overall record and a 4-1-1 mark in the Global Education Sports Partners League.
The league playoffs begin next weekend.
“We’ve been here since early August and the guys have worked hard. This is what we’re playing for now, titles and hardware. This is what we’ve been focused on,” said coach Todd D’Alessando. “I’m happy overall. We always want more as coaches and we’re lucky because we have great kids, great footballers. The guys are always working to be better technically and tactically but we’re always pushing them to be good people, too.”
The Centaurs finished with a flourish on Friday with a different kind of crowd on hand.
Woodstock held its inaugural Family Weekend for the prep soccer program so many players had their families on the sidelines.
“Having my family here all the way from Spain made it like triple special,” said Nico Ochoa who hails from Madrid. “Every game we try and give it our best and I’m just super-proud of the team.”
Senior Tommy Broderick’s family was also on hand although their travels were a little less ambitious. Broderick is from Rye, N.Y.
“It’s not too far. They only had to come from New York and they come to a lot of home games. It’s still special,” Broderick said. “It’s been great here. It’s been a lot of fun and I have been getting a lot better.”
Broderick got the Centaurs started.
He saw Hoosac keeper Pedro Branquinho wandering far from the net and took advantage.
“It was nice to show off some speed,” Broderick said. “I saw the goalie off his line. He saved the first one but I beat him with the second one. I put it away into an open net.”
Branquinho did get a hand on Broderick’s first attempt but the tip went behind the keeper and Broderick was the first one to get to the ball and had an open net.
“I beat him to it. I’m faster than the goalie 100 times out of 100,” Broderick said.
That’s how the score remained, however, for the remainder of the half as the Owls hung tough.
“The first half was really hard. They did a good job pressing us and, thankfully, Tommy scored that goal that put us in front. The first half was super-competitive and the score doesn’t match what the first half was like,” Ochoa said.
But things changed in the second.
“I feel like the coaches just told us a plan for the rest of the game and what we had to do to win. The team listened and the score came through,” Ochoa added.
Two players who had not scored this year extended the Centaurs lead.
Jack Buyers took a nice cross from Hae Sung Kim and converted 16 minutes, 2 seconds into the second half to give Woodstock a bit of a cushion.
Rodrigo Herruzo Blazquez sealed the deal with a goal just 5:20 later.
The floodgates opened after that.
Fabian Crespo tallied just over three minutes later to make it 4-0.
Ochoa got his seventh goal of the season when he took advantage of a defensive miscue by Hoosac near the net.
Kim finished off the scoring when the Centaurs were awarded a penalty kick with 9:35 left to play.
D’Alessandro was also pleased with his team’s defensive play especially that of Matias Solano, Obama Ngarambe, Ethan Haynes, Jorge Castellanos and Herruzo.
The Centaurs had prevailed earlier in the week over St. Andrews School in a non-league match, 4-3, also at the Bentley Athletic Complex.
Nico Velicico, Kim, Crespo and Castellanos (1 assist) all scored for the Centaurs in the victory.
Prep 1 suffers 1st loss
Woodstock hosted not only the first prep soccer Parent’s Day weekend but also the inaugural Capelli Classic tournament.
The Prep 1 team downed Vermont Academy on Saturday, 3-0, in the tournament’s opener but lost in the championship match to Pennington School, 2-0. It dropped the Centaurs to 10-1-2 on the season.
“I hope this is a wakeup call,” said Woodstock Academy coach Owen Finberg. “I think we got a lot of different contributions this weekend which was good. There are bigger trophies out there to play for. It’s a tough one, in terms of maybe the national rankings, but I think they will go and win their championship and we have a chance to play for ours. It’s a wake-up call and we’re going to try and turn it into a positive.”
The Red Hawks (15-1), who hail from Pennington, N.J., about a 4 ½ hour ride from Woodstock, qualified for the title game with a 5-1 victory over Putnam Science Academy.
They carried that momentum into the championship match and took the lead just 15 minutes into the match when Alvaro Carnicer Cozar took a free kick from 24 yards out and found the bottom left of the net.
“I don’t necessarily think they played better than us but the game is not fair all the time. I think our guys played hard, played well, created a lot of chances; we didn’t finish any of them and their keeper made some big saves. I think we took too much responsibility individually other than looking for the guy who could make the best play,” Finberg said.
The Centaurs had numerous chances to tie.
Daion Swan DeSilva had three strong chances 10 minutes into the second half, but one was thwarted by Pennington keeper Topher Kelley (14 saves) on a diving save.
Kelley also made a nice save on a free kick by David Cho.
But it was an official’s call that took some of the starch out of the Centaurs’ attack as an apparent goal from Jude Essuman was disallowed due to an offsides call.
“That could have been a game-changing play. I asked the linesman if he was 100 percent sure and he said he was. I couldn’t see it from where I was on the bench,” Finberg said.
Five minutes later, Carnicer Cozar took advantage of a defensive miscue to get a one-on-one with keeper Kevin Christensen and he won the battle to solidify the outcome.
“It was a good game and you have to take the lessons when you don’t get the win. That’s what we will try and do,” Finberg said.
The weekend started well as the 16 seniors in the program were honored on Senior Day on Saturday morning.
Christensen, Alvaro Medrano, Herruzo, Ajani Banton, Jonathan Moumboko, Zander Tidwell, Xahvi DeRoza, Essuman, Jasper Cox, Kevin Thomson, Giovanni Farina Santana, Swan DeSilva, Broderick, Romeo Corino, Dylan Payne, and Enoch Joseph were all recognized.
That was followed by the win over Vermont Academy where Tidwell scored off a Corino cross just five minutes into the contest.
The Centaurs nursed that lead until the final 15 minutes when Nico Velicico converted on a penalty kick to give them a little breathing room.
Swan DeSilva had the final goal off a Tidwell assist to send Woodstock Academy into Sunday’s title tilt.
Boys’ Soccer
Centaurs see season come to close; lose final 2 matches on penalty kicks
Penalty kicks are used to decide who advances in tournament play and, sometimes, who is declared a champion. Woodstock experienced both.
The boys’ soccer team lost in the ECC championship match due to penalty kicks and also saw the season come to an end, thanks to penalty kicks in the Class L state tournament.
The 29th-seeded Centaurs battled the host and fourth-seeded Redcoats throughout.
It was a far different outcome than when the two met in the second match of the season where Berlin prevailed handily, 4-1.
Senior Garrett Bushey tied the match with 18 minutes left in regulation on a free kick from 30 yards out. It was the sixth goal of the year for the senior.
The two teams finished knotted up at the end of regulation and after two overtimes.
Berlin picked up the win as it edged Woodstock, 5-4, in penalty kicks.
The Centaurs finished their season with a 7-8-5 record.
In the ECC Div. 1 tournament championship early last week at Ledyard, sixth-seeded Woodstock battled top-seeded East Lyme for 80 minutes of regulation play and 20 minutes of overtime with neither team able to put the ball in the net.
That meant the dreaded and, in a few cases generally by the underdog team, hoped for penalty kick session.
The Centaurs and Vikings couldn’t decide it in the first five players so they had to go to a second five where East Lyme eventually prevailed, 8-7.
The match had begun late due to a similar penalty kick finish in the Division 2 contest as Montville defeated New London in penalty kicks. It meant the Division 1 final did not finish until well after 10 p.m.
“PK’s are really hard to save, obviously,” said senior keeper Eli Susi. “It’s so close and you have to guess. Most goalkeepers are never going to make a PK save. When I made one in the first round, I think I got a little too excited and I think that was the start of the downfall. Great job to East Lyme, great job to everyone, and I’m just very proud of this team. It has gone so far.”
The Centaurs came in with a bit of a different look against East Lyme.
The Vikings had posted a 6-3 win over the Centaurs on their home field early in the season and followed that up with a 3-0 victory at Woodstock.
“We dropped one of our forwards back to the midfield because of the previous two games. It worked; we played a great game, 100 minutes of scoreless soccer. We were just one P-K short,” said coach Dave St. Jean.
“We put in the new formation against Bacon (Academy in the ECC semifinal) and that’s what got us the win. All we were really hoping for was one counterattack and a goal and then focus on our defense. We put a lot of our stronger players back who would usually be in the midfield and that mean we wouldn’t give up as many breakaways which has hurt us in the past,” Susi said.
The Vikings did take advantage of the defensive posture of the Centaurs.
They took six shots in the first half and eight more in the second.
“The second half was much harder, especially with the wind. The wind was not in my favor and that was in my head for a bit. I had one really bad kick and that got in my head for about half of that second half. I was so tripped up by the wind going against me, it kind of bothered me,” Susi said.
Susi made 10 saves to shut them out.
Bushey, Riley Wilcox, Zach Armbruster and Derek Rodriguez Arenas all hit their penalty kicks in the first round which ended in a 4-all tie.
Matt Johndrow, Trevor Gold and Logan Rawson also hit their PK’s in the second round of five but the Centaurs missed two attempts and the Vikings hit four of their five attempts.
Prior to the match, the ECC announced its All-Stars.
Woodstock Academy senior Matt Hernandez was selected as a Div. 1 All-Star with Eli Susi and Rodriguez Arenas chosen as honorable mention selections.
The ECC Scholar-Athlete from the team is Michael Susi with Rawson getting the team’s ECC Sportsmanship Award.
Volleyball
It was a match where pretty much everything was on the line.
The ECC Div.1 championship and the Div. 1 regular season title were both determined by the outcome of the ECC championship match on Wednesday.
Unfortunately for Woodstock, both went to East Lyme.
The top-seeded Vikings downed the second-seeded Centaurs, 3-1.
“It hurts because this was for everything, the tournament and regular season. Credit to them, they came out like they wanted it more than we did. We have the talk, are we going to walk it? At times, we do. It’s always an issue of being consistent. We’re just not consistent enough,” coach Adam Bottone said.
A big concern for the Centaurs early on was their inability to maintain service.
Woodstock had only seven service points in the first set as the East Lyme defense was up to the task and posted a 25-18 first set victory.
“We just had a lot of trouble executing (Wednesday) I think. East Lyme has great defense so it was really hard for us to find the floor and the weak points. They had big blockers which is hard for us to get around. They kept their foot on the gas the entire time, we had to be on our toes, and keep playing defense all the time. That made it hard, switching from offense to defense but we still did well, we played the whole way through,” said senior setter Sophie Gronski.
The Centaurs (18-4) did rally in the second set and made it close, leading 23-22. But one of those big blockers got in the way as Taylor Kachinsky tied it up with a block, a Woodstock attempted kill went long and Abby Parulis gave the Vikings the 25-23 second set win with a kill of her own.
“We don’t give up. That’s something that I love about my team; we don’t give up. We worked really hard, obviously we lost, but I was really proud of how we came back in the third set and the fourth set too, we fought for every ball,” Gonski, who finished with 31 assists and a team-best 13 service points, including an ace, said.
Woodstock was dominant in the third set.
Senior Izzy Mojica put together her only service points of the match, five in a row, to open up a 15-11 lead and the Centaurs recorded 10 of the last 13 points to post the 25-14 win.
What proved to be the final set belonged, for the most part, to East Lyme.
The Vikings (16-5) held the lead throughout until Mia Sorrentino (9 kills) took a pass from Gronski and found the floor to put the Centaurs up, 18-17.
The joy was short-lived.
East Lyme rattled off six of the next seven points and would capture both the regular season and tournament title when Parulis took a pass from setter Megan Romananowicz to end the Centaurs’ hopes with a kill for the 25-21 victory in the set and the match win.
“We were able to build some momentum in the third set and we got the lead and some confidence, but in the other sets, they dug a ball or we didn’t get the best swing. I guess we just made things too easy. We talked about that a lot. If we were out of system or if the set wasn’t perfect, we put easy balls over the net. I wanted them to go to the “1” because it was open and we didn’t utilize it enough- that’s on us,” Adam Bottone said.
Lily Bottone led the Centaurs with 12 kills and had two aces. Cassidy Ladd had two aces among her 10 service points.
The good news for Woodstock came before the match. Gronski was named by the league as the Player of the Year.
“She is very deserving of that,” Adam Bottone said. “I was happy for her. She is always the one that coaches are talking about when we play them, say they will nominate her for All-State because she is such a phenomenal player. She has put in a lot of hard work over the years, has over 2,000 assists, I’m super-excited for her.”
Gronski said she has been working for it since she was a child.
“It feels nice to be recognized for all the hard work that I have put into the sport but I owe all of it to my team. I couldn’t get these sets without passes from our Libero, Cassidy, she gets every ball straight to me which helps my assist percentage a lot. My hitters are amazing, they put the ball down,” Gronski said.
Interestingly enough, this is likely the end of the road for Gronski in the sport.
“I have decided not to play in college. I had a few offers and talked to a few coaches but I decided this is it. I play with my best friends every day, nothing can match that,” she said.
Adam Bottone also went home with some hardware as he was named ECC Coach of the Year.
“It’s nice. (The league) just started doing this pretty recently. It’s an honor for sure to be recognized for what I’ve been able to do with the program over a number of years,” the coach said.
Three members of the team, Gronski, Lily Bottone and Mojica were selected as ECC Div. 1 All-Stars.
Madeline Jezierski is the team’s ECC Scholar-Athlete while Jacqueline Dearborn was the recipient of the team’s ECC Sportsmanship Award.
The volleyball team advanced to the Eastern Connecticut Conference Division 1 championship match with a 3-0 win over Griswold in the semifinals Monday in Waterford.
Lily Bottone and Mojica had 10 kills apiece while Kaylee Bundy and Sorrentino added nine each. Many of those kills were set up by Gronski who finished with 41 assists.
Vivian Bibeau added five kills and 13 service points and Ladd added eight digs and 10 points.
The season is not over.
The Centaurs, the third seed, get a Class L state tournament first-round bye before hosting either Cheshire or Bethel Thursday.
The break could be helpful.
“I’m one of the hungry ones so I would go back out there tomorrow or even now if I could. But we do have a lot we can work on, so it’s going to be good just to be in the gym to practice a week before the States,” Gronski said.
Girls’ Soccer
The girls’ soccer team did everything it could. Unfortunately, even when giving maximum effort, sometimes, things don’t go your way.
The second-seeded Centaurs found that out early last week as they battled top-seeded Bacon Academy in the ECC Div.1 tournament championship match and fell short, 1-0, at Griswold High School.
“We’ve had a winning streak for so long that (the loss) reminds the girls that we are not invincible. We have to continue to put the work in,” coach Andrea Danforth said.
The last time the Centaurs found themselves on the wrong side of the scoreboard was on Sept. 23 and it came against the very same Bobcats who downed the Centaurs, 2-0.
Outside of a scoreless tie with Wethersfield, Woodstock (13-4-1) has been on the winning side of the scoreboard ever since.
But Bacon Academy (13-2-3) put the Centaurs behind halfway through the first half when sophomore Madeline Ives took a cross from Mia Hageman and slipped one past Ellary Sampson with 19:04 left in the first half.
The Centaurs repeatedly tested senior keeper Elizabeth Glover, but she was up to the task.
Such as a combination of saves in the first half where Juliet Allard fired a rocket at her, the rebound eluded her grasp but she was able to make a second save on a shot by Campbell Favreau.
In the second half, Leah Costa broke in one-on-one and Glover got the best of the battle, kicking it away.
It was just one of many second half chances that looked like they would result in
The Bobcats also gave Glover plenty of help as they retreated to a more defensive posture after taking the lead.
Prior to the match, Freya Robbie and Leah Costa were honored as ECC Div. 1 All-Stars.
Elise Coyle was an honorable mention recipient with Coyle also getting the team’s ECC Scholar-Athlete award and Kaylee Saucier was chosen for the team’s ECC Sportsmanship award
The season has not come to a close for Woodstock although they will have to wait a little while to play a second-round Class L state tournament match.
The sixth-seeded Centaurs received a first-round bye and hosted a second-round match on Monday against No. 11 Brookfield (the game ended too late for this edition).
Marc Allard
Director of Sports Information
The Woodstock Academy
Wodstock Academy senior Sophie Gronski (left) was honored as the Eastern Connecticut Conference volleyball Player of the Year and Adam Bottone was named the conference’s Coach of the Year prior to the ECC Division 1 volleyball championship match against East Lyme at New London High School.
Seniors Lily Bottone (ECC Division 1 All-Star), Izzy Mojica (ECC Division 1 All-Star), Madeline Jezierski (ECC Scholar-Athlete Award), Jacqueline Dearborn (ECC Sportsmanship Award) and Sophie Gronski (ECC Division 1 All-Star) were recognized prior to the ECC Div. 1 volleyball championship match with East Lyme at New London. Photos by Jill Grant.
The Woodstock Academy Prep soccer program celebrated Senior Day at the Bentley Athletic Complex Saturday during Parent’s Weekend at the school. Photo by Collin Singleton.