Blank Slate: Manalapan Shuts Out Colts Neck to Open 2026

MANALAPAN — Manalapan seniors Chase Lee and Evan Gluzman have been starters together on the Braves boys soccer team for the past two seasons and have faced Colts Neck three times during that span.

In all three of them, Colts Neck star striker Sean Moore beat Gluzman and Lee for a goal, and Manalapan did not win any of the three games.

To start their senior season, Lee and Gluzman once again stared down Moore and Colts Neck, and with only one more guaranteed chance to keep him off the board, the goalkeeper and outside back were intent on finally getting the best of one of the best scorers in Shore Conference history.

Lee saved three shots by Moore and Gluzman, and the defense made sure that was all he got as Manalapan — the No. 3 team in the Shore Sports Insider Boys Soccer Preseason Top 10 — shut out No. 4 Colts Neck, 2-0, to open up its season with its first win over Colts Neck during Moore’s career.

and cross from Antone Uhl. pic.twitter.com/6Ei2I8nGJ2

— Matt Manley (@Matt_Manley) September 2, 2026

“We knew from the start it was going to be a battle,” Gluzman said. “We just had to keep our head straight, stay strong, stay focused, and that’s all we had to do. Offense will follow after defense. Defense wins championships.”

Junior Jake Ramella scored the first Manalapan goal and assisted on the second by senior Ryan Seybuck to account for the offense.

Manalapan and Colts Neck are in the same division for the third straight year, and Wednesday’s season-opener was the fourth meeting in the last three years, with Colts Neck owning two wins and the two sides tying the first of two meetings in 2024. Moore scored a goal in all three games, including the lone goal in last year’s 1-0 Colts Neck win in the second game of the season for both teams.

Colts Neck beat Manalapan 3-0 on the way to winning the 2024 Shore Conference Tournament championship, and last season the Cougars made it back to the final, where they lost to Middletown South on penalty kicks. Manalapan, meanwhile, endured an up-and-down season en route to finishing 9-6-3 despite returning a wealth of offensive talent from the 2024 team that won 17 games.

“We knew we were losing our big goal-scorers up top, so this was going to be a big defensive year for us,” Lee said. “We knew it was going to come down to defense and that’s what happened here.”

Manalapan came out Wednesday with a renewed commitment to defense, and its experience in the defensive third of the field showed. Gluzman at right fullback is one of three defensive starters returning from last season, while Lee is a third-year starter in goal. Gluzman, senior center back Nick DeSantis and senior left fullback Adriano Lia are the three returning starters on the back line who contributed to Wednesday’s defensive effort, but the Braves also got a lift from two other fullbacks — including pushing forward on the attack.

Junior Rayan Pradhan shone in his first start at center back, teaming up with DeSantis to close down the middle box for Moore and the Colts Neck attack.

“The defense had an incredible game,” Lee said. “Big round of applause for Nick (DeSantis) for standing (Moore) up and to Rayan too. It was a big back-line effort, and when we got our chances, we put them away.”

Senior Antone Uhl, meanwhile, came off the bench and made the offensive play that led to Manalapan’s first goal.

With Colts Neck turning the tide in its favor during the second 20 minutes of the first half, Uhl shifted the momentum back to the Manalapan side by winning the ball on the right side, racing past two Manalapan players all the way to the end line and slipping a pass toward the middle of the 18-yard box. Ramella positioned himself for the pass and one-timed a shot past Colts Neck freshman goalkeeper Jonas Camera for the game’s first goal in the 35th minute.

“I have to give my props to Tony Uhl,” Ramella said. “He made a great run down the line. But it wasn’t only about the goal. It’s about the whole entire team. We kept a clean sheet in the back. We struggled with defense in our last scrimmage, but we kept that clean sheet today, so those guys stepped up for us.”

Ramella was denied a shot in the 54th minute, but recovered the ball and slid it from the left side of the 18-yard box to the opposite side. Seybuck gathered it and, while falling to the ground, slipped a left-footed shot to the far right corner of the goal for a 2-0 Braves lead.

Colts Neck owned a 7-4 edge in shots at one point in the second half, but Manalapan controlled the final 12 minutes and wound up with an 8-7 edge in attempted shots. Lee saved four of Colts Neck’s shots to earn the clean sheet while Camera saved two.

“We knew things needed to be changed,” Lee said. “They flipped the field on us today, and it was a different game they were trying to play. In the second half we dealt with it better.”

The Braves won their opener without head coach Brandon Downey, who was serving the first game of a two-game red-card suspension dating back to the final game of the 2025 season. Longtime assistant coach Matt Vitale stood in as head coach and led the Braves to the win. Vitale will also coach Tuesday’s Class A North divisional game at No. 2 Marlboro.

Manalapan graduated its top two scorers from 2025 in forwards Ethan Lustig, Dan Altman and Edoardo Russo. Seybuck was the fourth-leading scorer as a junior. Through one game, the Braves showed they could generate chances against a quality opponent, with Seybuck and Ramella up top and senior Gavin Halcomb, senior Ben Salter, junior Luke Ottenheimer and sophomore Kayden Komar running the midfield.

Given Manalapan’s recent history against Colts Neck, however, the defensive performance against Moore was the most satisfying part of the victory. Moore is 14 goals shy of tying the all-time goals record in the Shore Conference and 43 points away from the all-time scoring mark in the conference. Last year, Moore scored 30 goals and failed to score in only five of Colts Neck’s 22 games. The Cougars went 17-0 when Moore scored and 2-3 when he did not.

“We felt like people were looking at us like the underdogs in this game, and we really made a statement that we should be on top,” Ramella said.