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2025 SSI Boys Soccer All-Shore Team: First Team

Matt Manley|December 4, 2025|Last Updated December 5, 2025

2025 Shore Sports Insider Boys Soccer All-Shore Team

All-Shore Teams were selected by Shore Sports Insider Soccer Editor Matt Manley based on first-hand accounts, coaches input, statistics and players’ impact on team success.

First Team

Sean Moore, Jr., Forward, Colts Neck

2025 Stats: 30 goals, 8 assists

A year ago, Moore’s season ended with him leading the Shore Conference in goals with 29, but a state-tournament hot streak by Southern’s Aidan Donnelly knocked him off the top perch. He still managed to lead the Shore in total scoring as a sophomore and this season, Moore scored one more goal to hit the 30-goal plateau and this time, it was good enough to lead the Shore. Moore also finished a point behind Ranney’s Eddie Magherini for the lead in total scoring, which would have marked the second straight season in which he led the conference.

Moore scored in 17 of Colts Neck’s 22 games this season while running up a career-best four hat tricks, including a four-goal performance against Shore Regional that matched his career-high for a single game. He scored two game-winning golden goals and both came against Freehold Township. The second of the two came 52 seconds into overtime in the Shore Conference Tournament semifinal and sent the Cougars to their second straight SCT championship game.

With one season left in his high school career, Moore has a chance to become the first ever 100-goal scorer in the Shore Conference and is 43 points away from becoming the all-time leading scorer in the history of the conference. In his three seasons, Moore has scored at least 21 goals and has eclipsed 43 points in each season, putting the two milestones in his crosshairs.

To read more about Moore’s season, check out his 2025 Shore Sports Insider Boys Soccer Player of the Year profile.

 

James Brady, Sr., Forward, Christian Brothers Academy

2025 Stats: 16 goals, 6 assists

In 2024, the CBA soccer team saw its run of three straight Shore Conference Tournament championships and four consecutive year-end No. 1 rankings in the Shore Conference end and among the major culprits was a lack of a reliable scorer. No player on the 2024 CBA squad scored more than six goals and Brady returned as one of the team’s top scoring contributors with a modest four goals and three assists in 2024.

In 2025, Brady and his fellow seniors made sure the Colts did not have the same issue in 2025. For his part, Brady worked his way onto the Shore Conference leaderboard as one 16 players in the conference with at least 16 goals and the only player in the Class A North division outside of Sean Moore to score at least 16 goals. The revitalized CBA attack helped the Colts win a sixth straight Class A North division title and carried them back to the NJSIAA South Jersey Non-Public A final after losing prior to the championship game for the first time in 11 years in 2024.

Brady recorded three multi-goal games in 2025, including both goals in a 2-0 win over No. 9 Holmdel. Six of Brady’s goals came against teams ranked in the final SSI Top 10 (two vs. Holmdel and one each vs. No. 3 Colts Neck, No. 5 Toms River East, No. 7 Marlboro and No. 8 Freehold Township) and he scored one apiece in wins over state-ranked opponents in Bergen Catholic and St. Augustine. The goal against St. Augustine came 12 seconds into overtime and sent CBA to the South Non-Public A final and was one of three tournament goals that Brady scored between the Shore Conference and NJSIAA Tournaments.

 

Cruz Farkas, Sr., Forward, Manasquan

2025 Stats: 21 goals, 8 assists

A young, hungry group of newcomers helped power Manasquan to the No. 6 ranking in the final Shore Sports Insider Top 10, but for a team to overcome the graduation of 17 seniors from the prior year, a young group of juniors and sophomores can rarely do it alone. Enter Farkas, who was the top scorer as a junior on a senior-laden team and whose presence as one of the Shore’s top scorers kept Manasquan’s opponents honest. After putting up 14 goals and seven assists while playing in Class A North as a junior, Farkas topped those marks with 21 goals and eight assists against a similarly-challenging Class A Central field in 2025.

Farkas was one of eight players in the entire Shore Conference to reach the 20-goal mark and of his six multi-goal games, four of them came either in the NJSIAA Tournament, Shore Conference Tournament or in the Shore Conference Tournament group stage. In Manasquan’s three tournament wins, Farkas not only scored in all three; he scored at least twice in all three, including a hat trick in a first-round SCT win over Red Bank. His two goals and two assists helped Manasquan handle perennial Group II contender Delran, 4-1, and he scored two more goals in a 4-3 win at second-seeded Cinnaminson in the Central Group II quarterfinals.

Farkas also stepped up in Manasquan’s highest-profile win of the season, which was a 4-2 win over eventual Shore Conference Tournament champion Middletown South. Farkas posted a goal and an assist in the victory, which proved pivotal in Manasquan clinching the outright Class A Central division championship. The senior striker also scored two goals apiece in division wins over Wall and Shore to help the Warriors coast to the division championship.

 

Connor Saul, Jr., Forward, Middletown South

2025 Stats: 16 goals, 1 assist

The leading scorer on the No. 1 team in the Shore Conference this season, Saul’s 16 goals put him in the Shore’s top 20, but his season was more about when he scored his goals than about how many he scored. Half of Saul’s goals during his junior season came during the Shore Conference and NJSIAA Tournaments and those eight tournament goals were the second most of any player in the Shore Conference behind Moore from Colts Neck.

Well before his postseason rampage, Saul announced his junior breakout with the way he opened the season. He opened the season with two goals in a resounding 4-1 win over Holmdel, the topped that performance with a hat trick in a 3-0 Eagles win over Shore Regional in the following game. Saul then made it six goals in the first three games by scoring an equalizer in the 75th minute at Lacey, which set up a golden goal by senior teammate Brett Denery to win a key Shore Conference Tournament group-stage game.

Saul had a quiet season between his big equalizer vs. Lacey and the start of the Shore Conference Tournament, but when a championship was on the line, Saul was at his best. He scored three goals in the first two rounds of the Shore Conference Tournament, then picked up his first goal of the Central Group III Playoffs in a 1-0 win over Northern Burlington. That was a precursor to a second-half hat trick in the Central Group III championship game at Colts Neck that cemented him as one of the Shore’s most dangerous scorers and, perhaps, the area’s best big-game scorer.

 

Luke Strada, Sr., Forward/Midfield, Middletown South

2025 Stats: 12 goals, 10 assists

While Saul topped the stat sheet for Middletown South in 2025, Strada was the ultimate difference-maker for the Eagles during their first ever championship season. Strada was an impact sophomore on a 2023 Middletown South team that won nine games and handed CBA a stunning defeat during the regular season, but opted to play in the MLS Next program in lieu of high school soccer during his junior year in 2024. Middletown South went 10-8-3 without Strada, but suffered painfully-close losses to Colts Neck, CBA, Lacey and Long Branch in games that impacted the Eagles chances of winning division, conference and NJSIAA sectional championships.

Strada’s return to the team in 2025 marked an announcement to the returning Middletown South players that their pursuit of the program’s first ever tournament championship was about to get serious and it did not take long for that message to spread throughout the Shore Conference. Strada scored in the season-opening win over Holmdel to go with two assists and went on to post two multi-goal games during the season – both hat tricks.

Strada picked up an assist in two of Middletown South’s Shore Conference Tournament victories and converted the game-winning penalty kick in the Eagles’ shootout win over Colts Neck in the Shore Conference Tournament final. He capped off his scoring with four goals in the first two rounds of the NJSIAA Tournament, then scored the golden goal in the Eagles’ 2-1, overtime win over Moorestown that sent them to their first ever Group III championship game. His presence will be hard to replace, but the standard Strada helped set during his final two high-school seasons figures to leave a lasting impression in the resurgent program.

 

Brandon Cosentino, Sr., Midfield/Forward, Ocean

2025 Stats: 21 goals, 8 assists

On an Ocean team that lost a significant amount of senior leadership and skill from a Shore Conference Tournament semifinalist in 2024, Cosentino was an invaluable source for both in 2025 for a Spartans team that again made noise in the SCT. The senior did not play high school soccer until this season and in his only season on the high-school pitch, he finished tied for sixth in goals scored and was one of seven players to reach the 50-point threshold.

Cosentino’s impact on winning at Ocean was apparent beyond just the raw scoring totals. The Spartans won 12 games in 2025 and Costentino scored at least one goal in 11 of them, with the lone exception a 4-0 win over Raritan in which he had an assist. That included a hat trick in a 3-2 win over Ranney that clinched first place in Ocean’s SCT group, an equalizer in a 2-1, overtime win over Class B North division champion Manasquan, and the deciding goal in Ocean’s 1-0 win over NJSIAA South Group IV champion Southern Regional in the SCT round of 16.

Cosentino posted six multi-goal games and his most memorable of those performances was the rare instance in which his heroics did not result in a Spartans win. The senior put on a show in the first round of the NJSIAA Central Jersey Group II playoffs vs. Wall by scoring his second hat trick of the season, with all three of his goals tying the game. Wall spoiled the performance by winning a wild 5-4 barn-burner that was one of the games of the year in the Shore Conference, with Cosentino’s dominance up front at the center of that memorable match.

 

Brody Nacarlo, Sr., Midfield/Forward, Southern

2025 Stats: 17 goals, 14 assists

Although four starters returned from Southern’s 2024 NJSIAA Group IV championship team, only one of them played on the attack and only seven of the team’s 67 goals from the title team were returning. That one returning attacker was Nacarlo and on top of assuming a leadership responsibility and wearing a bullseye as the team’s No. 1 scoring option, he opened the season playing through a knee injury suffered in August. As Nacarlo worked his way into form, so too did his team, as Southern got off to a tepid 3-3-1 start.

As Nacarlo worked his way toward the best version himself, the team came along within him. By the end of the season, Nacarlo was back to full speed and Southern began to play like an updated version of the team that won the Group IV championship with a senior-led team a year earlier. A year after Southern won its first South Jersey Group IV title with 18 goals in four sectional playoff wins, Nacarlo led an effort that produced 17 goals in four games and a second consecutive sectional crown. During the state tournament, Nacarlo posted a brace in each of the first two rounds, then went off for a hat trick and an assist – all within a span of 13 minutes in the second half – in a 5-1 rout of Cherry Hill East in the championship game.

Seven of Nacarlo’s 17 goals on the season came in the NJSIAA Playoffs and he also added four assists during the championship run, including two in Southern’s 5-4, overtime win at top-seeded Washington Township in a sectional semifinal match that the unofficial game of the year in Shore Conference boys soccer in 2025. In addition to a second sectional championship, Nacarlo closes out his final year Southern third in the Shore Conference in assists in 2025, 11th in goals and ninth in total scoring.

 

Ben Kazani, Sr., Midfield, Colts Neck

2025 Stats: 7 goals, 21 assists

Only one player in Shore Conference boys soccer scored 30 goals this season and he has Kazani to thank for 11 of them. That is how many of Sean Moore’s 30 goals in 2025 were set up by assists from Kazani, who also dished out an additional 10 assists to lead with Shore with 21 – four more than the next closest player. Kazani had five games this season in which he assisted more than one goal and while Moore had a role in three of those games, Kazani twice registered two assists during games in which Moore did not score. One of those was a two-assist performance in a 3-2 loss to CBA during the Class A North regular season.

Kazani scored fewer goals than any of the other forwards and midfielders on the All-Shore first team, but he was still involved in several critical moments for Colts Neck, including as a scorer. In the Cougars’ memorable comeback win over Lawrence in the NJSIAA Central Jersey Group III quarterfinals, he assisted Gabe Kruglyansky’s equalizer early in the second half, then converted the winning penalty kick with one second on the clock. His lone three-assist game also game in the NJSIAA Tournament and also included a goal in a 5-0 win over Nottingham. In an SCT group-stage win vs. Freehold Township, Kazani buried with game-tying direct kick with under five minutes to play and in the SCT vs. Freehold Township, he set-up Kruglyansky’s equalizer with 1:04 remaining in regulation.

Moore’s presence as a 30-goal scorer coming off 74-point season as a sophomore was the driving force for Colts Neck in a 19-3 season, but without Kazani running the midfielder and tying together a shutdown defense to a lethal attack, the Cougars would have found it difficult to replace the missing pieces from the 2024 Shore Conference Tournament championship team. It also might have meant fewer chances for Moore, who authored a Player-of-the-Year campaign with Kazani’s help from the midfield.

 

Caden Schweigart, Sr., Defense/Forward, Southern

2025 Stats: 17 goals, 6 assists

Getting Brody Nacarlo healthy in the middle of the field was part of Southern’s transformation from inexperienced team with a .500 record to a repeat sectional champion, but nothing sparked the Rams’ turnaround more than Schweigart’s move from center back to striker. Schweigart opened the season transitioning from outside back as a junior in 2024 to center back in 2025 and he was handling his end of the deal for the Rams, who allowed five goals in the first six games. After a 3-1 loss to Lacey, however, coach John Nacarlo decided to grant Schweigart’s wishes to play up in the formation.

The move immediately paid off. After scoring two goals as a junior and one goal in the first six games of his senior season, Schweigart scored a hat trick vs. Pinelands in his first game at striker, then extended his streak to four straight games with a goal. Southern went 13-4-1 after moving Schweigart to striker and Schweigart scored in 11 of the 13 wins and also added a goal in the one draw. His highlight was a pair of goals in Southern’s epic, 5-4 overtime win over Washington Township in the South Jersey Group IV semifinal.

Schweigart’s season came full circle when he played center back in Southern’s final two games due to an injury to classmate Kyle Schoepfer. He spent most of the sectional final vs. Cherry Hill East on the back line and helped limit the Cougars to one goal. In the Group IV semifinal, Southern conceded a goal on a low-percentage shot in the first six minutes, then help North Brunswick off the board the rest of the way thanks to a spirited effort by Schweigart, despite his team playing a man down for most of the second half.

 

Brett Denery, Sr., Defense, Middletown South

2025 Stats: 2 goals

Middletown South senior Brett Denery celebrates his goal vs. Holmdel. (Photo: Tom Smith | tspsportsimages.com) - Middletown South Brett Denery

Middletown South senior Brett Denery celebrates his goal vs. Holmdel. (Photo: Tom Smith | tspsportsimages.com)

Denery is the second All-Shore defender in 2025 to undergo a position change in the middle of the season that helped unlock his team’s potential on the way to winning a sectional championship. In Denery’s case, however, he moved laterally in the formation rather than vertically, although the lateral move allowed him to involve himself in the attack. A natural outside back, Denery began the season in the center of Middletown South’s defense and the lineup was beginning to go stale as the Eagles slipped to a 4-3 record. Then, coach Dan Riverso plugged junior Charlie Welsh in at center back, moved Denery back to his natural spot on the left side of the defense and watched his team take off.

Denery is a two-time all-division and All-Shore defender for Middletown South and he has been at his best when he can pick his opportunities to get involved in the attack. Statistically speaking, his penchant for pushing forward did not result in a major impact for his own goal totals, but his threat from the back created yet another dilemma for defenses that already had to account for fellow first-teamers Strada and Saul on the attack.

While he scored just two goals, Denery made them county. Strangely enough, both goals came while he was still playing center back and were on similar plays. He headed in a corner kick in an opening-day win over Holmdel and headed in a cross for the golden goal in a Shore Conference Tournament group-stage win over Lacey that avenged a 2024 loss to the Lions.

 

Charlie Messano, Sr., Defense, Christian Brothers Academy

2025 Stats: 3 goals, 1 assist

CBA senior Charlie Messano defends Holmdel junior Turner Foster. (Photo Credit: Tom Smith | tspsportsimages.com) - CBA Charlie Messano

CBA senior Charlie Messano defends Holmdel junior Turner Foster. (Photo Credit: Tom Smith | tspsportsimages.com)

Few defenders in the Shore Conference exhibited more versatility than Messano, who could assume many forms for CBA depending on the challenges presented by the opponent of the day. The senior outside back could play within the possession-heavy game, mark a top scorer, defend the box on the ground and in the air, and push up to provide offense.

Messano’s most notable defensive effort of the season came during the regular season, when he was assigned to mark Sean Moore in a late-September road game at Colts Neck. Moore was not a factor through the first 79 minutes as CBA jumped out to a 3-0 lead, but the Cougars rallied to within 3-2 and Moore broke loose for a shot in the final minute that he missed wide of the left post. In the end, Messano led an effort that held Moore scoreless for the first time during the year – one of only five times Moore did not score in Colts Neck’s 22 games.

Messano’s offense came into play in the form of three goals, one of which came with an assist in a 3-3 draw vs. a 14-win Old Bridge side. He also scored the deciding goal in a 3-2 win over a state-ranked Bergen Catholic squad, as well as the capper in a wild, 5-3 win over Matawan in SCT group-stage play. The senior defender was part of a CBA back line that, along with goalkeeper Brady Lepore, limited opponents to 23 goals in 23 games.

 

Bobby Lockard, Sr., Defense, Freehold Township

2025 Stats: 3 goals

As a promising freshman in a deep, decorated Patriots program, Lockard witnessed a group of older players lead Freehold Township to a second consecutive Central Jersey Group IV championship. In the next two years, he became an integral part of the starting XI, but the rest of the team did not click like it had during the previous two decades of excellence. In both 2023 and 2024, Freehold Township finished with a record below .500 for the first time in 20 years, leaving Lockard and his fellow seniors with a chip on their collective shoulder heading into the 2025 season.

Lockard and Co. announced their return to the Shore’s Top 10 conversation with an opening-day draw vs. preseason No. 1 Manalapan and later handed Long Branch its first loss of the season in a game that effectively clinched Freehold Township a share of the Class B North division title. Lockard captained the team and a defense that gave up its fair share of goals (34 in 22 games) but routinely raised their level to meet the gravity of the match and the quality of opponent.

The big-game DNA of both Lockard and his Freehold Township team were no more apparent than in the Shore Conference Tournament. Lockard scored the first goal in a 2-1 win over Brick Memorial in the first round of the SCT, then led the Patriots to shutout road wins over both Toms River South and Manalapan that catapulted his team to the SCT semifinals for the first time since 2019. Lockard also scored a go-ahead goal vs. Colts Neck midway through the second-half of the semifinals before the Cougars rallied to tie the game with a minute left and win it in overtime. It was a bitter end to the season for Freehold Township, but a spirited effort that marked the return to prominence for one of the Shore’s cornerstone programs of the last half-century.

 

Mike Moore, Sr., Goalkeeper, Toms River East

2025 Stats: 10 shutouts, 24 goals allowed (24 games)

As a junior in 2024, Moore split time in goal with an All-Shore goalkeeper in Bobby Calvo on a Toms River East team that led the Shore Conference in goals-allowed-per-game. A year later, Moore took over as the full-time starter in goal while playing behind a starting defense that featured three sophomores and a junior first-year starter. The inexperience showed in allowing three goals on opening night vs. East Brunswick, but the Raiders rallied for a 4-3 overtime win and were off to the races.

Toms River East stormed to a 9-0 start to the season with Moore allowing four goals in the eight games that followed the season-opening win over East Brunswick. Before last week of September, the Raiders had secured their first outright Class A South division championship since 2011, which they clinched with a 2-0 win over Toms River North. After the nine-game streak ended with four losses in five games – including overtime losses to Southern and CBA – Toms River East rebounded by reaching the quarterfinals of the SCT and the semifinals of the South Jersey Group III Playoffs for the second straight year.

Moore finished the season with 10 shutouts, good for a fourth-place tie in the conference. Those shutouts included tournament shutouts vs. Barnegat (SCT), Winslow (SJ3) and Lacey (SJ3), plus a regular-season shutout of a high-scoring Ocean outfit. Moore also turned in a virtuoso performance in a 2-1, overtime win over Rumson-Fair Haven in the SCT round of 16 – a match that pitted Moore against fellow first-team candidate Jack Del Priore and featured two of the Shore’s best keepers at the top of their respective games.

 

Continue to All-Shore Second and Third Teams

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