With the 2022 boys’ soccer season passed, this year’s All-Star selections have been announced.
Four Upper Allegany Valley Soccer League (UAVSL) teams have multiple stars, with Ridgway and Port Allegany leading the pack with three each.
At the top of the league sits a three-way tie between Ridgway, Elk County Catholic and Coudersport, all boasting a 7-3 roster. To determine the official and final standings, the league looked at the three teams’ records against each other.
With that measure, Ridgway claimed the title with a 3-1 record against the other two, followed by ECC, which had a collective 2-2 record then Coudersport with a 1-3 record in the matchups.
Ridgway earned the top spot in the UAVSL but claimed the seventh seed in the District 9 Class A playoffs. Matching up against No. 2 Redbank Valley, the game was closely fought through both halves and saw Ridgway come away with a 3-2 victory. Moving on to the semifinals, Ridgway met No. 3 Karns City, who ended the Elkers season with a 4-0 shutout and eventually met ECC in the finals to win a District 9 title.
Despite walking away from the season without a championship, three Ridgway athletes saw individual success with All-Star selections this season in Jack Benninger, Ethan Streich and Aaron Myers.
For ECC, their efforts throughout the regular season earned them the second slot in league standings and two All-Star selections, Tony Messineo and Timmy Brannock.
As the No. 4 seed in the district tournament, ECC barrelled through the first two rounds of the playoffs, denying any goals to be scored against them, beating No. 5 Port Allegany 1-0 before facing the top ranked Clarion-Limestone in a dominating 5-0 victory.
Making it back to the D9 finals for the second year in a row, ECC met a new opponent in Karns City. While it was not the 8-0 blowout ECC saw in the finals a year prior, Karns City slipped past the Crusaders 2-1 to win the championship.
Coudersport was the final team locked in a tie for first place. With Mike Delp in his first year coaching, the Falcons collected a 7-3 record and locked in the No. 6 seed going into the playoffs.
“I tried to come in with more energy. We have to play a possession game and we have to go after the ball. We can’t sit back and wait for the ball,” said Delp. “A lot of what the previous coach had done, I didn’t change a lot in that aspect, just maybe coach it in a different way.”
Opening with their postseason against the soon-to-be-champions Karns City, the Falcons dropped the game and ended their season with a 2-1 contest.
Coudy’s two All-Star selections, Jacob Hooftallen and Nash Delp, are familiar faces to the league, this being Hooftallen’s fourth consecutive All-Star appearance and Delp’s second. In his senior year with the Falcons, Hooftallen led the team in goals scored with 21, including six game-winning goals. For Delp, he scored eight goals throughout the season and tallied a team-high 19 assists.
“When (Nash Delp) came to the team as a freshmen, he had played extensively as goalie in rec league and the previous head coach made that transition for him to go from goalie to forward. As a parent and assistant coach at the time, I didn’t see it but (the previous coach) was brilliant with it because he turned out to be a phenomenal forward,” said Mike Delp. “(Hooftallen) has always had vision of soccer way ahead of his years. He’s challenging to coach as a person because of his soccer intelligence, but at the same time, he’s a dream to coach because he’s extremely reliable and you can count on him game in and game out.”
Port Allegany finished with a 6-4 record, making the best of a situation that saw them lose nine seniors due to graduation, including last year’s All-Star and scoring leader River Cramer, who scored 36 goals a season ago, and stalwart goalkeeper Ty Guilds.
“Overall it was a very positive season, when looked at as a whole. We started off incredibly well and sort of limped into the end of the season,” said Port Allegany head coach Aaron Clark.
“Going into the season, we thought this was going to be a bit of a growing season with as much as we had lost the prior year, and we were starting and playing a lot of freshmen and a lot of 10th-graders. All season long, we were in pretty much every game we played in, even when we were losing. Defensively, we were incredibly solid but struggled to score goals as the season wore on.”
With a slightly above .500 record, the Gators were still able to enter the postseason, the third and final team from the UAVSL to qualify. However, facing ECC on their way to the finals, the Gators lost, 1-0.
Port Allegany was the only other team besides Ridgway to receive three All-Star selections. Henry Kisler, Austin Hamilton and Jett Ruding all earned the individual accolades.
“There were a handful of the younger players who did well to shine, I think most notably (sophomore) Austin Hamilton,” said Clark. “He is a phenomenal young athlete and incredibly nice and pleasant young man. It was nice to see him grow into the game this year.”
Ruding, in his final year with the team, also took home the league MVP award. Ruding finished his career with five goals and 19 assists.
“It’s going to be hard losing (Ruding) after this year. He’s such an incredibly positive young guy who loved the sport for four years with us. He plays with a passion and an energy that’s pretty well unmatched on our team,” said Clark. “It’ll be hard to replace that spark.”
The final All-Star from the UAVSL came from 2-8 Kane’s Isaak Johnson.
