By DAVE O’SULLIVAN
Staff Writer
On X @GDsullysays
When you have a generational talent like Jack O’Brien on your roster, your plan as a coach is pretty simple — do whatever you can to get the ball on his foot, anywhere on the field, and let him do what he does.
As a senior in 2023 all O’Brien did was score 25 goals and add seven assists — against teams whose No. 1 job was to find a way to stop him. One of the best players in school history, O’Brien finished his career with 58 goals and 27 assists and now is a sophomore playing at West Chester University.
Oakcrest High coach Scott Meile didn’t know what his club was going to look like in the post-Jack O’Brien era, and last year was a tough transition, as the Falcons went 4-13 and scored just 12 goals the entire season, half as many as O’Brien scored himself as a senior.
But, they are starting to create their own identity, and this fall the Falcons produced one of their best seasons in the last two decades, tallying a 14-2-2 record heading into a state playoff opener at Middle Township on Tuesday.
“It’s just going to take dedication and not being scared of the next opponent. That’s really all,” senior midfielder Cole Sanders said about being able to survive and advance in the South Jersey Group 2 sectional tournament. “We want to see better passing. Our passing hasn’t been that great, we’ve just been playing kick ball and knocking the ball down the field. I think we connected on a couple (in a recent win over Camden Catholic) and that was working to get the ball down the field.”
The Falcons are playing with some confidence, as they’ve won seven of their last eight games, including consecutive 1-0 wins over Camden Catholic and Holy Cross in preparation for this week’s state tournament. But this group doesn’t have the playoff experience to pair with that confidence, and Meile said he knows his defensive-minded team is going to have to scrape and claw for every loose ball, and maybe find a little luck here and there, to make a deep run into November.
“When you get past the cutoff date, you have to start getting ready. We’re going to be on the road at Middle Township and (recently) we’ve just been trying to get the kids exposed to a little higher level of soccer,” Meile said after last week’s win over Camden Catholic. “We have a lot of juniors. We have about seven seniors, but our junior class is where most of our kids are, and we have to get them ready for (playoff soccer).”
But while the Falcons don’t have a marquee scorer (leading scorer Samuel Rueda Gil has 10 goals, no one else is in double digits) Meile said he likes the fight in this group and wouldn’t be surprised if they put together a few quality games in the postseason. And, you never know what can happen in November, as witnessed by Sterling last year. The Silver Knights got healthy and hot at the right time and rode that hot streak all the way to a Group 2 state championship.
“It’s the same kind of thing we’ve had here during the 16 years I’ve been here. We have really mentally tough kids. Physically, they compete, they battle, they fight. They might not have the best soccer skill, but they have a great competitive side,” Meile said. “When you’re talking about kids from Oakcrest, you’re talking about kids who are super competitive.”
Oakcrest is going to hang its hat on defense during the state playoffs. Goalie Ryan Sanford has 12 shutouts, including seven in his last eight games, and the back line is led by junior sweeper Jackson Goodwin, a tall, strong central defender. If the No. 9 seeded Falcons can hold opponents to one or two goals, they’ll have a puncher’s chance.
“Defensively, all season, you can put us up against anybody in the Cape-Atlantic League. We just have to make sure we execute on restarts and stuff like that,” Meile said.
Meile said he was hoping this group of upperclassmen would start to put it together this season when workouts began in the summer.
“I don’t know if I saw all this coming, but we did talk about in the preseason with Cole and Bruce (Bellace), we said, ‘look, if you can get these guys to compete on the practice field and if we get into the situation where it’s next-man-up, we have the depth to be really good.’ The first week we were down 1-0 to Buena and I turned to my assistant coaches and said, ‘this is not going to work.’ But we started rolling along in the second half of the season, like we traditionally do. We always start to roll as the kids get more touches and they’re on the field more.
“Last year, we really struggled because we had a lot of kids we thought could fill into (O’Brien’s) spot, but you’re talking about an all-timer,” Meile added. “Every time we got the ball we had four kids streaking to the goal (trying to be like Jack) and we had to talk to them about how we needed to gain possession, play to the flanks, play outside then cross to create opportunities that way. We had to make our money on miss hits and restarts. We had to be a lot more creative. We score a lot now on corner kicks.”
WHAT’S NEXT: No. 9 Oakcrest travels to No. 8 Middle Township on Tuesday at 2 p.m. in the opening round of the South Jersey Group 2 tournament. The winner plays either No. 16 Pleasantville or No. 1 Lindenwold on Friday in the sectional quarterfinals.
