s
By DAVE O’SULLIVAN
Staff Writer
On X @GDsullysays
Erik Clark’s morning coffee tastes a whole lot better these days. If you see him in traffic and he gets cut off by the car in front of him, he’ll probably just smile and laugh it off. A neighbor blowing leaves onto his front lawn? No biggie, he’ll go ahead and bag those up. These days, the sun is shining every afternoon, nary a cloud in the sky, no threat of rain or storm.
Life is just a whole lot different when the team you pour your heart and soul into coaching is winning — finally.
“It’s bizarre,” Clark said after a win over Buena Regional in October. “I’m used to losing, so this is a totally different feeling. Sometimes I’m still shook with how to react with stuff like this, but it definitely feels good and I’m so proud of the girls.”
Clark took over the Pleasantville High girls soccer program 10 years ago, and the Greyhounds struggled mightily during the first decade of his tenure. Most coaches would have thrown in the towel coaching a team that went 0-and-48 his first three seasons.
Things didn’t get much better after that. With not much of a feeder program, Clark’s soccer players came into high school with very little experience, and early on he rarely had any club level players. In the 2014 season, the Greyhounds went 0-15 and scored just four goals all season while allowing 97. In 2015, Pleasantville didn’t score a goal until its final game, a 4-1 loss to Bridgeton. The Hounds were outscored that season 127-to-1 and went 0-18.
But Clark just kept on plugging along, hoping that one day things would turn around and he could feel what it’s like to go home every night as the coach of a winning team. Pleasantville had just a single win in 2017, 2018 and 2019, went winless in 2020, then won one game each in 2021 and 2022. But last year, the tide finally started to turn, as The Ville went 5-9-2.
Clark finally had a couple of club players to build around in Diana Ruiz and Darexy Monroy, and this year he got the powerful midfielder he’d been missing all these years in the form of freshman Isabella Alavarez.
It all added up to a season that saw the Greyhounds go 14-5, win the Cape-Atlantic League United Division title for the first time ever, qualify for the CAL Tournament for the first time in program history and earn a berth in the state playoffs.
“This is huge. It’s game changing,” Clark said after his team beat Buena to wrap up the division title. “This program has been around for 11-plus years and I’ve been around for 10 of them. We were used to losing, so this is definitely a game changer. We finally have the right players at the right time. I always say it’s like a puzzle. Now we have the midfielder in place, we have offensive players in place, we have key defenders in place — it all finally came together at the right time, that’s what happened.
“We have a few key players. Diana Ruiz came in four years ago, we got Darexy Monroy three years ago and this year we added Alvarez. With them as a core, the girls can build around that and there has been tremendous improvement this year.”
Those three players were stalwarts for the Greyhounds this past season. Ruiz led the team with 34 goals and added 12 assists while Monroy scored 32 goals and had 23 assists for a team-high 87 points. Alvarez has been the key though, setting things up through the midfield while also adding a scoring threat from set pieces. She’s the high-level club player Pleasantville has been missing all these years. She scored 23 goals as a freshman and added 18 assists in the regular season.
“Her coming here (instead of a private school) is like the Bat Signal,” Clark said. “Her coming here is a signal that we’re ready to compete. Hopefully now we can attract more players like her instead of watching them walk away.”
Senior Nayeli Soriano said she was so excited about soccer this fall that she found it hard to pay attention in class, even on days when it’s just practice after school.
“I’ll be thinking that I don’t want to be in class, I want to be out here (on the soccer field). You’ll be doing work in class and just be thinking about the game. It makes it tough to focus on your school work,” she said. “My first year, we were really bad, but we’ve gotten so much better. We’ve been working and communicating. Sophomore year things started turning around, and junior year we got even better. And this has been our best year ever. It’s amazing (to win a division title).”
“We’ve never been this good before, it feels really good,” Ruiz added. “I feel proud, not only of me but of all the girls and all the work we’ve put in. It shows out on the field. It’s been a lot of dedication and hard work, summer practices, everything. I’m so happy and proud of every single girl on this team.”
Soriano specifically thanked Ruiz for helping to provide such a memorable senior year.
“Diana has been scoring half the goals for our team, I’m so proud of her,” she said. “I’m proud of my whole team because we’ve all worked hard for this. I never thought I’d have a senior year like this.”
Ruiz said she’s equally as thrilled that she’s ending her high school career on a high note. Her freshman year the team went 1-13 and she scored just one goal (the Greyhounds had just two that season), but she finished her career with 40 goals and 22 assists.
“I never could have imagined (the success this season) because our team was never like this. But we have some new girls and they’ve really made a big difference on our team. I believe in myself more and I believe in my teammates. We have an amazing bond, we get along really well,” Ruiz said. “We’re also getting a lot of congratulations around school, and it’s the first time we’ve gotten that, so it feels nice. As a team, we’ve gone from so many losses to winning so many games, I feel like that’s going to continue to motivate the girls to keep going and never give up.”
So what kept coach Clark going through all those years with hardly any success?
“Hope.
“You keep holding out hope. I had the hope that it would eventually turn around, and it did,” he said. “(Not winning) is definitely taxing. We’re playing against girls who have been playing since they were 3 or 4 years old, so building them up to compete against that is a huge undertaking. We have to work that much harder, and this year, they did. They put in all the work, and it’s paying off. We’re putting more work in and we now have numbers, finally. We’re getting more girls out and we’re putting in the work.”
Contact Dave O’Sullivan: sullyglorydays@gmail.com
