On a bright and cool autumn day, Deerfield welcomed rival Choate Rosemary Hall for the traditional-end-of-season contest. Although both teams created scoring opportunities in the first half, the score remained 0-0 after 45 minutes of play. After an additional 30 minutes of end-to-end action, Deerfield broke the stalemate with a sensational goal from captain Luca Antongiovanni ’20. Counter-attacking from deep in the DA end, senior Brendan Kish played long and wide down the left for Antongiovanni to run onto. Antongiovanni took the ball at speed, pushed it toward the near post and past two lunging Choate defenders, and finished with a deft toe-poke shot past the helpless Choate ‘keeper. The DA supporters surrounding the field went wild! For the next 15 minutes, DA defended effectively and repeatedly pressed forward in search of a second goal to ice the contest. But in an almost unbelievable turn of events, a Choate winger dribbled down the left flank in injury time and buried the ball high in the back of the DA goal. The match ended in a tie, and the DA boys were clearly disappointed; but they could also find satisfaction and take pride in having achieved some very good results against a number of the best teams in New England, and especially in the way that they overcame some disappointing results in the middle of the season and ended the schedule a much-improved team. They also had a lot of fun along the way and developed a wonderful spirit of camaraderie! Special recognition goes out to captains Luca Antongiovanni and Zach Davis ’20 for their leadership on and off the field.
Congratulations to midfielder Zach Davis for being named to the WNEPSSA Senior All-Star team, to forward Marcel Aziamale ’20 for being named to the NEPSSA Senior All-Star team, and to goalkeeper Ben Diffley ’20 for being named to the All-NEPSAC team (Honorable Mention).
Next year’s team will feature many new faces, as Boys’ Varsity Soccer will graduate 14 fine student-athletes from the current roster of 21.