Hundreds of extremely exuberant Raider fans stormed the field after the top-seeded Scotch Plains-Fanwood High School soccer team shutout the third-seeded Westfield Blue Devils for the North Jersey, Section 2, Group 4 crown at Scotch Plains on November 15. But it took nearly 55 minutes before the No. 3, 18-1-2 Raiders could find a chink in the No. 5, 18-3-3 Blue Devils’ armor en route to a 3-0 triumph. It was the first section title since 2016 under Tom Breznitsky.
The first score of the game came on a left-side corner kick by co-captain/ center midfielder Luca Passucci. He used his right foot to launch his shot that hooked perfectly toward the net and lodged into the upper right side out of the reach of Blue Devil goalkeeper Simeon Gunzberg (4 saves) with 25:39 left in the game. Junior forward JayvonYoung scored the other two goals and he was assisted by Luca Passucci and senior midfielder Sam Lindell. Raider goalkeeper Shawn Guzman recorded three saves.
Even though there was no scoring in the first half, the Raiders were on the offensive the majority of the time. From his midfield position, Luca Passucci would constantly be looking to get the ball to Young, who for the most part, would be sprinting down the right sideline.
“He looks for me out wide to get balls in for me to score,” Young commented.
Luca Passucci got several free kicks from the 40-45-yard range and accurately lofted them into the top end of the box where his teammates could get either a head or foot on them to finish the job. But the most serious threat of the first half came in the final 10 seconds when Luca Passucci lofted a left-side corner kick into the box causing a scramble, but Gunzberg eventually smothered the ball before it could cross the goal.
The very beginning of the second half began with a real eye opener when Young started play from midfield by drilling his shot right into the crossbar.Afew inches lower would have meant a 1-0 lead.
“The crossbar! We have been working on that in practice a lot. I hit one of them against Fairleigh Dickinson and I thought I could do it and get a good goal but it hit too hard,” Young recalled.
Moments after Young’s shot off the crossbar, Blue Devil co-captain Niko Pierce and senior midfielder Henry Iannuzzi got opportunities but their attempts were knocked away. After Luca Passucci’s score, the Blue Devils attempted to answer on a corner kick into the box by Pierce. Then five minutes later, senior Austin Williams was tripped setting up a free kick taken by Pierce from 30 yards out but the Raider defense covered well.
From that point onward, the momentum shifted. Passucci lofted a great lead to Young who broke free down the middle, drawing Gunzberg out from the goal. Young saw the opening and scored with 14:28 on the clock. It took only 17 seconds to make the score 3-0 when Lindell looped the ball over a Blue Devil defender’s head and Young was there to strike gold.
“One of them I broke free, turned and I saw an open goal and I finished. The second one I had a good ball from Sam Lindell. I turned seeing that I had an open space. So I cut it out wide and then turned in and tapped it in the bottom left corner,” Young described.
The shutout was the Raiders’ 15th of the season and to date, they have outscored their opponents, 55-9.
Young was quick to credit the efforts of his defensive back. “They are really good! Devin Pearce is a really good player. He didn’t play (varsity) his freshman year. He played JV but his junior year, he was working and got way better. Senior year he’s a captain. He’s one of the best players on this team. Jack Sponheimer has been good since his freshman year. Massimo (Passucci), he’s only a sophomore. As a freshman, he was good, as a sophomore, he’s even better. Bradley (Pearce), same with him! He got called up and he has been playing ever since. He’s a really good player now.”
Last year, the Raiders were on the short side of a 3-2 shootout to the Blue Devils for the section crown. This season, the Blue Devils nipped the Raiders, 1-0, in overtime in a regular-season game but the Raiders came back with a 2-1 victory for the Union County Title.
“We had a lot of motivation coming into this game. First game, it hurt us because we knew we were better than them, had more opportunities, we had possession and all that stuff. Then the second game, we knew we could get one, so we kept pressuring, and pressuring, got the county one and now, here we are! We got this one,” Young expressed.
The Raiders would host the North Jersey, Section 1 champions, the Ridgewood Maroon, in the Group 4 semifinal on November 19. The winner would play for the Group 4 Championship.
