Fresh off a trip to the finals, the ConVal boys’ soccer team is reloaded, senior-heavy, and primed to make another deep playoff run.
Tuesday’s home contest against Oyster River was as good a litmus test as any the Cougars will face. The Bobcats have been to the Division II Final Four seven years in a row, winning twice in that span, including a 2022 championship run that saw them knock off ConVal in the semifinal; the Cougars eliminated Oyster River in the semis last fall before losing to Campbell on penalty kicks in the title game.
“Total respect to them,” said senior co-captain Greyson Yergeau after ConVal’s 1-0 victory over the visiting Bobcats in Peterborough Tuesday afternoon. “They’re a great soccer team. You know they’ve got a great coach, great players, great leaders…It’s always a big game that you circle on the calendar just because you know the team and how good their organization is.”
The Cougars return 14 seniors from last year’s runner-up team and added a few newcomers from South Meadow School’s undefeated championship. All that experience and the infusion of new blood has ConVal looking good under head coach Ben Brewster, a lifelong soccer guy tapped to take over this fall. Brewster’s an old-school coach but open to new ideas, perhaps perfect for this mix of veteran and freshman players. After Tuesday’s win, coach sat his team down in groups of three, back-to-back-to-back, to discuss the game – but only after allowing them to blast off a few celebratory air horns from the portable speaker and do a little dancing at midfield. Brewster’s team – undefeated after three games against John Stark, Manchester West and Oyster River – has the talent, experience and chemistry to get back to the finals this year.
“The potential is there,” Brewster said. “Basically, everybody improves. Each player gets better. We’re still doing skill stuff – taking balls down and trying to play more skillfully. You take one game at a time, and just try to play well, and hopefully you beat the teams that aren’t quite as experienced. And then you have some good matches like today was.”
Tuesday’s contest was a good one indeed. ConVal scored the game’s only goal about 15 minutes in when freshman Kayden Meas took a feed from senior Harlan Bielagus and converted it past Oyster River keeper Carter Jacques.
“I figured they were going to come in and really come at us to start the game,” Brewster said, “but we battled. We seem to have our share of the play plenty of times. First half looked like we might have had a couple in-close chances to do something. We just didn’t do it. So I always tell the guys, you have to win some games 1-0.”
After the early score, both defenses locked in and locked down. Jacques made a number of tremendous saves, as did his ConVal counterpart, senior keeper Anthony Gutwein, who also benefited from a ball off the crossbar that would have tied the game, and the defensive backlines on both sides kept the chances at a minimum.
Yergeau, along with fellow senior captain Logan Montano, versatile senior Ryan Pimental and sophomore Brenton Boice, holds the fort for the Cougars defensively.
“All game we were really solid,” Yergeau said. “We really try to hold each other accountable in the back. Some of us are really young. Some of us are seniors. So we try our best to hold each other accountable and move as a unit.”
Meas became the eighth Cougar to score a goal thus far this fall, as no ConVal player has scored more than one. The even distribution is indicative of the wealth of talent ConVal has, as Meas, senior captain Paxton Lothrop, new freshman Kingsley Cummings, senior Parker Trodella and Bielagus are just a few of the offensive options for the Cougars.
“Our goal is always to make it back [to the championship],” Yergeau said, “so we’re going to try our best to do everything we can to make it back…There’s always work to do with the chemistry and just becoming a big family. Every year, every soccer team you see at ConVal, we’re a family. This is the same group of guys, most of us, that we’ve been playing with since we were five or six years old, coming up through ConVal Soccer Club. We all know each other. One big family.”
ConVal (3-0) is at Souhegan (0-3) Friday.