Story by John Mooney of the SPF TAP
It had been almost a decade since Scotch Plains-Fanwood’s boys soccer team had won the Union County title, but the disappointment ended Saturday night at Arthur L. Johnson High School.
Two first-half goals by Jayvon Young and Colin Kochanowicz that gave the Raiders a lead that they would not relinquish as Scotch Plains-Fanwood’s defense held off archrival Westfield, 2-1, in the 2024 title match-up. Early in the second period, Westfield’s Henry Iannuzzi put the ball past Raiders goalie Shawn Guzman to cut the Blue Devils’ deficit in half, but Scotch Plains-Fanwood’s defense held off their opponents until time expired.
“I took the ball from Taso (Pavlou)’s cross and saw the keeper was not making his first action, so I took the shot,” said Jayvon Young, who leads the Raiders with 10 goals this year. “Being county champions has been a goal since the beginning of the year.”
“We knew coming into this game that we wanted to start off hot,” senior co-captain Luca Passucci told TAPintoSPF after the game. “Sometimes we have not been able to find the back of the net as early as that, but in games that we do, we typically do well. It (scoring early) gave us the confidence we needed to play the rest of the 70 minutes and stay on top.”
Passucci said it was gratifying to win in his senior year.
“We’ve had good teams, we’ve had good players. It’s not every year where you could win a championship. I know that too well from the last three years,” he said. “I knew from day one in the summer when this group got together that it would be our best chance to win. I didn’t want to leave high school without winning hardware. But we’re not done; we will celebrate this weekend and then get back to work.”
Coach Alex Passucci, who played on great Scotch Plains-Fanwood teams as a player in the 1980s, said after the game that it was hard to find words to describe what winning a championship – the team’s first since 2015 – means to him.
“I’m just very proud of them. The boys have been working hard. They work very hard,” he said. “They earned it.”
The Raiders are not done yet. This season, they had three goals in mind.
“We started the season thinking we’d be a good team. Then we realized that we could do something special,” Passucci said. “Our first goal was to win a county championship, which we did tonight. The other two goals are to win a sectional title and then a state title. We are just going to focus one game at a time.”
