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Legacy Time: St. John Vianney Seniors Look to Leave Mark in 2025

Matt Manley|November 5, 2025|Last Updated November 5, 2025

Playing in an NJSIAA South Jersey Non-Public A section that includes programs with a collection of sectional championships, county and conference championships and high rankings in the state during their respective histories, the St. John Vianney boys soccer team has had a hard time standing out.

Unlike the top five seeds in this year’s South Jersey Non-Public A bracket — Pingry, Christian Brothers Academy, St. Augustine, St. Joseph of Metuchen and Notre Dame — the Lancers have never won an NJSIAA sectional championship and within the it’s own conference, the program has never been past the semifinal round of the Shore Conference Tournament.

On the playing field, however, St. John Vianney has no trouble standing out in 2025. The Lancers have a forward who is the program’s all-time leading scorer, a center fullback who covers the entire field and a midfielder who looks like more like a tight end at a Big Ten football program than a high-school soccer standout. On top of that, the Lancers are a senior-powered group that believes that, despite the decorated histories of the teams it is chasing, it belongs in the conversation as one of the championship contenders in South Jersey.

“I think we’re as equal and as good as anyone when we’re playing our game and dialed in,” senior forward Mason Boles said. “I think we can go far.”

On Tuesday, St. John Vianney kicked off what it hopes will be state-tournament run that carries into next week. The Lancers handled Union Catholic for the second time this season, scoring the first five goals of the game on the way to a 5-1 win that sets up a showdown in South Jersey Thursday against third-seeded St. Augustine. The Lancers’ talent was on full display in the round-one win, with Boles and fellow senior Alex Siniscalchi each scoring two goals and classmate Isaiah Boone adding a goal and an assist. On the defensive side, senior Luke Noble led a defense that held the Vikings without a shot until the final eight minutes and also pushed forward to pick up an assist on Siniscalchi’s first goal.

“This is a special team,” first-year St. John Vianney coach Jay Murphy said. “Even when we struggled early, you look around and there is just so much talent here and they play as a team. They’re all-in on everything together, they are friends off the field and they have been here for four years. We have fourteen seniors and all the starters are seniors and the ones that don’t play meaningful minutes. Obviously this is a tough section; everybody is a tough out. I think if we play our best, we can be in any game. We’re excited about Thursday, but we know it’s going to be a very difficult match.”

Boles added to his record-setting scoring number and now boasts 44 goals and 22 assists for his career, including 19 goals and 13 assists this season. His 110 points resulting from those goals and assists are a school record in boys soccer and if Boles can add to his total on Thursday, St. John Vianney would have a chance to knock off the South Jersey Coaches Cup Tournament runner-up.

St. John Vianney senior Mason Boles. (Photo: Tom Smith | tspsportsimages.com) - SJV Mason Boles

St. John Vianney senior Mason Boles. (Photo: Tom Smith | tspsportsimages.com)

“He knew going into the season what the situation was going to be,” Murphy said of Boles. “He knew the double-teams were going and he might have started out the year pressing a little too much, but once he got used to actually seeing it, he has been able to relax, play his game and he has really done a great job getting other players involved.

“I might be biased but I don’t think there is a better player at his position in the Shore. He is just so dynamic and he can change the game at any moment. Plus, he is one of the hardest workers we have here. Seeing him get the scoring record and to watch him have the success he has had, it’s been a real honor.”

A goal-scorer like Boles will help St. John Vianney compete with whichever of the top seeds it encounters in the state tournament, but Boone is the player that makes the Lancers unique among the contenders in South Jersey Non-Public A. At a built 6-foot-4, Boone can take over a game in the air alone and is also impossible for almost any high-school soccer players to move off the ball when it is time to work for positioning in the middle of the field.

Boone began the season missing St. John Vianney’s first seven games due to injury and the Lancers started 2-3-2 with the senior on the sideline. He returned for a 1-1 draw vs. Shore Regional and the Lancers lost to Toms River South, 3-1, in his second game back. From there, however, St. John Vianney has gone 10-2-1 with its lineup intact, with Boone contributing six goals and five assists in his 15 games.

“We’ve really come together as a team and we’re buying into each other,” Boone said. “We all have our mind on the same goal, so now we just have to go out and show what we can do.”

Last season, Boone was a center fullback for St. John Vianney, but Murphy made the calculation early on in the season that this year’s version of the Lancers benefited more from Boone playing on the attack than it did with him in the back.

“It took him a little while to get his legs back under him, but you can tell the minute he gets out there, he is a difference-maker,” Murphy said. “Last year, he did it as a center back and this year, we have him in the midfield. We got used to playing without him, so it took a little bit of time for the team to adjust, but once everyone got used to having him back and he got closer to a hundred percent, we really started to take off.”

The performance of the defense while Boone was sidelined served as reinforcement that it could hold up even without its 6-foot-4 stalwart on the back line. Noble has played like one of the best central defenders in the conference, while seniors Alex Buckley, Dominick Fuocco and Chris Pohl stepped up in front of junior goalkeeper Liam Steiner.

St. John Vianey senior Luke Noble. (Photo: Tom Smith | tspsportsimages.com) - SJV Luke Noble

St. John Vianey senior Luke Noble. (Photo: Tom Smith | tspsportsimages.com)

“It was a conversation we had over the summer about moving (Boone) to midfield, so there was an understanding going in even before he got injured,” Murphy said. “We felt Mason was going to be a marked player after the season he had last year, so it was just a way for us to get some more offense forward. The guys in the back were doing such a good job when we started in the summer, I felt that Isaiah could help us in other areas. He has just been a huge difference-maker for us and we’ve had a lot of guys step up around Mason, because he really is facing a lot of doubles.”

Boone’s move forward has helped take the pressure off Boles and an attack that graduated two productive wingers in Anthony Marano and Kyle DiMarco, plus a steady midfielder in Jack Scheuing. Siniscalchi (eight goals, nine assists) and fellow seniors Alex Cardenas (one goal, two assists) and Ethan Bellone (seven goals, three assists) returned as starters in the midfield and have been the best versions of themselves this season. Senior Cyril Azer has moved into the starting lineup to produce five goals and four assists, while sophomores Greg Azer and Ethan Eddleston have been the underclass contributors to the attack.

“I think we might have been relying on our last class (of 2025) too much and using that as an excuse early on,” Boone said of his team’s early struggled. “We had to realize that we have talent on the team right now and we just had to start believing in it. We have a lot of seniors and this is our team now and we had to start playing like it was our team.”

It has been 14 years since St. John Vianney has broken through the quarterfinal round of the NJSIAA Tournament and reach the sectional semifinal round and 11 years since the Lancers were in the final four of the Shore Conference Tournament. It has not been for lack of opportunity either: Since the penalty shootout loss to St. Joseph Metuchen in the 2011 South Non-Public A semifinals, St. John Vianney is 9-3 in first-round NJSIAA Tournament games, but 0-8-1 in the quarterfinal round. The draw was another penalty shootout loss to Pingry, while six of the eight losses were to CBA — all by margins of at least three goals.

The last two quarterfinal losses, however, are the ones that are actually worth examining because so many of the current seniors were on the team. In 2023, SJV lost, 1-0, at St. Peter’s Prep on a penalty kick in the 78th minute and a year ago, St. Joe’s eliminated the Lancers in another penalty shootout after a 1-1 draw. The NJSIAA began scoring tournament shootout victories as overall wins last season after counting them as ties up to that point.

The struggles vs. CBA have also been exorcised to some degree thanks to last year’s team, which beat CBA, 3-2, in a Shore Conference Tournament group stage game, with Boles scoring that game-winner in the second half. For a team that won back-to-back Shore Conference division championships in 2023 (in Class B Central) and 2024 (in Class B North), beating the Colts in a meaningful game has been, to date, the crowning achievement of this senior class.

Starting Thursday, the St. John Vianney seniors are hoping to replace that memory with a new one by knocking off St. Augustine, which could very well earn the Lancers another state tournament road game vs. CBA in the sectional semifinals. CBA hosts No. 7 St. Thomas Aquinas on Thursday afternoon as well.

“At this point, it’s about sticking together and playing for each other,” Boles said. “Stay locked in, play our game and we’ll see what happens.”

“It’s a little scary now because if we lose, we’re done,” Boone said. “But that also makes it exciting, because if we win, we keep going and when you keep winning, the support grows and grows and everybody starts believing. The more you win, the more there is at stake and we have been working hard to be ready to play games like this. We want to go as far as we can go.”

 

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