Rye High Boys’ Soccer

Garnets Seek Lakeland Summer Title

By Mitch Silver

Rye High Head Coach Jared Small is back. After spending the past three years earning his Law degree while serving as an assistant coach for the Harvard Varsity Soccer squad, Coach Small has retaken the reins for the Garnets.

This summer his 31 boys are on a shakedown cruise, hoping to earn a spot on the team in the fall by performing well in the Lakeland Summer League, a series of 50-minute games against some of the best teams in Section I. Yorktown was 2017’s Class AA champion, Byram Hills was the Class A winner, and both Somers and Briarcliff have fielded championship squads in the recent past.

Counting Sunday’s 2-0 loss to Briarcliff, Rye at 5-2-1 is in the thick of things in the ten-team league, just behind third-place Yorktown (a team they beat 1-0 earlier in the summer), and just ahead of Byram Hills, a team they met post-press time to decide fourth place going into this Sunday’s playoffs. Somers leads the circuit with a 7-1 record, losing only to Coach Small’s Garnets by a score of 2-1 on July 3.

After his most recent game, the coach said, “I want to reiterate how excited I am to be back and working with this group. We have a great bunch of kids, including five goalkeepers! They have proven to be engaged and hungry to improve, and the past few months have proven extremely rewarding for all of us.”

 

 

Freshman Jack O’Connor will smother a shot just in time.

Kevin Abbondanza directs Rye’s attack.