Since August, Rye coach Jared Small has preached the same message to his boys over and over: play one game and one possession at a time. In a 1-0 section quarterfinal win Monday against No. 9 seed Byram Hills in Nugent Stadium, Small’s top-seeded Garnets demonstrated loudly and clearly they got the message.
“This one’s big,” said senior Lex Cox, who helped avenge Rye’s 3-0 loss to Byram Hills in September. “We treat every game the same, we really do – but this one was a little different. In our pre-game meeting, we talked about how Byram Hills came into our house earlier this year and gave us our only loss of the season. We weren’t going to let that happen again. That memory powered us all the way to the last possession. I’m really proud of my teammates tonight.”
Prior to the opening kickoff, fans of both Rye (15-1-3) and Byram Hills (9-5-3) must have imagined this would be a tense, low-scoring, and well-played game. With their free admission, fans got two hours of soccer that felt like Game 7 of a World Series.
“These are two programs with a lot of shared postseason history,” Small said. “Both well-coached, both teams really want to win, and two teams that are very different stylistically. These games are always memorable. Tonight was special mostly because of the score, a 1-0 win. We held on down the stretch and stood tall against a strong team. It was fantastic.”
The only goal came off the right boot – you read that correctly, the RIGHT boot – of Rye junior midfielder Kasen Scarperi just under eight minutes into the game. After withstanding a strong check from a Byram defender, Scarperi did what he’s been taught to do his entire soccer life: put the ball on net and force the goalie to make a play.
In the heat of the moment, Byram’s goalie took his eye off the ball for only a nano-second, and the ball scooted between his legs into the back of the net. 1-0 Rye. One game, one possession.
But there were still 72 minutes of soccer left to play.
From that moment on, the Garnets began to believe – in a way they really hadn’t shown all season – that they could win. Rye’s back-row defenders, Harrison Zimmer, Cole Ferber, Christian Hoffman, and goalie Will Alexander – all sophomores – established a fortress around Rye’s goal that Byram could not crack. They handled wave after wave of Bobcat set pieces and long throw-ins with the composure and outright dominance of seasoned veterans.
Rye’s midfield of Cox, Scarperi, senior Shun Nagata, and junior Peter Wilmot won so many contested balls for Rye it was as if the pinball machine was tilted in the team’s favor. These highly skilled players out-hustled, out-ran, and out-played their bigger and more experienced Byram Hills counterparts for 80 minutes.
On a Rye team loaded with so many weapons, Zimmer, a multi-tool, do-everything player, has emerged as one of the future stars of Section 1 soccer. His hard-nosed, nearly mistake-free brand of soccer is a joy to watch.
“We had to dig deep in our hearts for this one tonight,” the sophomore said. “The fans and the energy from the crowd tonight was something I’ve never experienced before. We’re gonna enjoy this one right now, but we need to get ready for our next game.”
Rye hosts No. 5 seed Panas (12-3-3) at 6 p.m. Wednesday in the section semifinals.
