By DAVE O’SULLIVAN
Staff Writer
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SOMERDALE — With a combination of senior Montgomery Draham — a big-time soccer star who’s simply having fun in her final season of high school lacrosse — and a very talented freshman in Caitlyn Claybourn, the Sterling Silver Knights will be looking to shock South Jersey Group 2 this spring.
Friday afternoon’s dominant 15-6 win over visiting Middle Township certainly added some validity to their aspirations.
Draham, who is committed to play soccer at Purdue University this fall, racked up as many goals as the Panthers did all by herself and also added five assists, and Claybourn — daughter of Knights coach Michelle Claybourn — was just as impressive in her varsity debut, sending home four goals to go along with three assists to give her seven career points after playing in just one game. Sterling scored five times in the opening quarter, built a 7-3 lead by halftime and never looked back, showing they might be a much better team than the one that went 7-11 last season and was blown out by Lacey Township in the opening round of the state playoffs.
“I feel like we’re improving every day. We’re taking baby steps each time out on the field, and the score proved that, so I’m happy about that,” said Draham. “We wanted to transition more, instead of killing our midfield by having them just run up and down the field. We wanted to transition to the attack and just trust each other, and I feel like we did a pretty good job of that.”
Last season, nearly all of Sterling’s scoring came from just three players — Draham (59 goals) and seniors Antonia Troilo (88 goals) and Adriana Zasada (59 goals, 24 assists). The Silver Knights don’t have a returning player who scored more than five goals last year, so the team’s focus this season is on sharing the ball and creating as many scoring opportunities as possible with as many players as possible. That strategy was on full display against Middle, as seven Knights players had either a goal or an assist, and of the team’s 15 goals, 10 came with an assist.
“We did well, a lot of people got touches today, and overall I think we improved today. My mom is the coach, so I’ve been watching this team forever and I’ve been wanting to play for awhile. We had three scrimmages and we did well in them, so I wasn’t really nervous at all. I’m only a freshman, so I’m just trying to have fun out there,” Claybourn said. “In past years, we had a lot of 1-vs.-1 attacks, but everyone has gotten so much better at handling the ball. We can use passing a lot more to get other people open and have more scoring threats.”
Claybourn was the first person to score this season for the Knights, early in the first quarter, and that was a harbinger of things to come. Draham added a couple of goals to push the lead to 5-0 entering the second quarter, and then early in the second frame Draham dropped a nice little slide pass to Claybourn, who finished to give Sterling a 6-0 lead.
Middle Township (0-1, 0-0 Cape-Atlantic League National) fought back behind a couple of goals by senior Natalie Stoltz, shaving the lead to 7-3, and the Panthers got to within 7-4 when Stoltz scored again to open the second half. But Sterling (1-0, 0-0 SJILL National) responded with three straight goals to open up a commanding 10-4 lead. And with the way goalie Gracie West was playing (14 saves), that lead became insurmountable.
“This shows we can beat anyone, and we’re out here to leave our mark,” Draham said. “We want to show people that we can compete for a (sectional) title. We lost a couple of seniors from last year but have some great freshmen. We just want to keep building our team chemistry and I feel like we’re starting off well with that. A lot of us play soccer, so we have some good chemistry.”
While Draham came out and said the Knights have their sights set on winning a South Jersey Group 2 title, Claybourn showed she’s been picking up some cues from her mom when it comes to giving a more measured response to the question of the Knights’ season expectations.
“We want to have a winning record, win our conference and just do our best,” the rookie said.
WHAT’S NEXT: Sterling travels to Cherry Hill East on Monday at 3:45 p.m. Middle Township hosts Washington Township on Wednesday at 4 p.m.
