Middletown South Stuns CBA to Reach First Shore Conference Final Since 2003

NEPTUNE — Speak with any player on the Middletown South boys soccer team about how the 2025 team approaches every game and one might hear some version of the same message.

Play as hard as you can for as long as you can.

Like any mantra shared by a group of people, there is lived experience behind its adoption and as is often the case, that experience involved some hard lessons. With a team full of players who were part of last year’s team, Middletown South adopted its mentality, in part, because in 2024, the Eagles often ran out of gas just before the finish line as glory waited on the other side.

This year, an older, wiser and flat-out better Eagles team has made sure that tank is never empty while there is still time on the clock and on Wednesday night at Memorial Field in Neptune, Middletown South finished its biggest win in more than two decades like a team that was ready to play 80 more minutes against the best the Shore Conference had to offer.

Protecting a one-goal lead for the final 30 minutes, Middletown South leaned on its airtight defense and a second-to-none work rate to close out a 2-1 win over Christian Brothers Academy — the No. 1 seed in the Shore Conference Tournament — and earn a trip to the Shore Conference championship game for the first time since 2003.

“That’s who we wanted,” senior defender Ryan Kapler — who scored a goal and assisted the other Wednesday — said of playing CBA. “I wouldn’t have wanted to play anybody else and it feels really good to beat them. It’s been 22 years for too long and there is no one better to beat to get there than CBA.

“We have been working hard all season and we belong here. This is our revenge tour.”

This year’s championship game will be the first one without CBA in it since 2019. Meanwhile, Middletown South will play for its first SCT championship Saturday, 3 p.m. at Memorial Field against defending tournament champion Colts Neck, which also won a dramatic, 2-1 game on Wednesday in Neptune.

“We have been really good at holding teams and keeping them in front of us and the message in the second half was, “It’s not Christmas morning yet,” fifth-year Middletown South coach Dan Riverso said. “We’ve got forty minutes to play and close it out.'”

The closing effort on defense would not have been possible without a pair of first-half goals, both of which came off corner kicks by senior Luke Strada. The first came in the 22nd minute off the head of Kapler and was not immediately ruled a goal. Kapler’s challenged header got past CBA junior goalkeeper Brady LePore, but was cleared out of the goal by a CBA defender before it reached the net. Several seconds after the clearance, with the ball out near midfield, the center official got word from the assistant referee on the sideline that the ball indeed crossed the goal-line and Middletown South had scored the game’s first goal.

Here is video of the first Middletown South goal last night vs CBA. Not the greatest video, but it paints the picture. https://t.co/hWQkAbHqDG pic.twitter.com/TcEmGYeots

— Matt Manley (@Matt_Manley) October 23, 2025

“I definitely saw it go in,” Strada said. “Your heart is racing when you see the ball go over and you’re waiting on the call. It was definitely in from what I saw.”

“I knew it was in,” Kapler said. “If he didn’t call it (a goal), I would have went crazy.”

In the 32nd minute, the Eagles earned another corner and again cashed in, this time with the goal that proved to be the difference. Strada’s service into the box ignited a scrum in front of the right post and it was again Kapler who knocked the ball out of it. CBA’s wall of defenders managed to slow the shot down, but Matt Sekular — who began the game on the bench — was there to finish off the goal and give Middletown South a 2-0 lead.

“I think we were originally playing balls too far back, to the far post,” Kapler said of Middletown South’s corner kicks. “We caught them in the middle and caught them early and running onto the ball was really important today. We caught them sitting in the box, we ran onto it and it ended up working for us.”

“It’s so important to score early,” Riverso said. “It sets the tone, you see the different level of confidence. In the first 10 minutes, we were kind of all over the place and then we hit the crossbar and you see everybody get more confidence and that confidence just starts rolling.”

Prior to breaking through with the first goal of the game, Middletown South broke up 10 minutes of CBA-heavy possession with a ringing shot of the crossbar by sophomore Luke Strukiewicz from 30 yards out. The Eagles sophomore also had some useful advice for Strada ahead of his corner kicks.

CBA and Middletown South are underway in the 2nd semifinal. Luke Strukiewicz slams a 30-yarder off the crossbar for Midd South in the 10th minute. pic.twitter.com/a0RvtOuwAG

— Matt Manley (@Matt_Manley) October 22, 2025

“Luke actually said to me before the corner, ‘Keep it away from the keeper,'” Strada said. “I’m like, ‘That’s probably a smart idea.’ I did that with both of my corners and we scored on both of them. I tried to keep it away and we won the headers in the air.”

The Eagles followed up the two corner kick goals by shutting CBA down over the final eight minutes of the half to go into intermission with a 2-0 lead. In the second half, however, CBA came out the aggressor and was a constant threat for the first 25 minutes of the half.

That Colts threat netted a goal in the 51st minute, which was the first goal allowed by Middletown South since the first half of a 2-1 win over Neptune on Sept. 25. Junior John Little beat a defender along the end-line and found senior Ryan Asadi at the near post. With his back to the goal and a defender on his hip, Asadi turned and slipped a shot from the edge of the six-yard box to the far side netting to cut Middletown South’s lead to 2-1.

Ryan Asadi receives a pass from John Little with his back to the goal and buries it side netting. CBA right back in it, down 2-1 in the 50th. pic.twitter.com/sZxJLLFjoD

— Matt Manley (@Matt_Manley) October 22, 2025

The CBA goal ended a run of six straight shutouts by Middletown South and senior goalkeeper Carson Perry. More importantly, it moved CBA within a goal of pulling even with Middletown South on the scoreboard and put the Eagles defense — as well as its mantra — to the test.

Middletown South has a recent history of causing problems for CBA, which includes a 2023 victory over the Colts with many of this year’s starters on the field as sophomores making significant contributions. If that result supplied Middletown South with the confidence to win Wednesday’s game, last year’s failure supplied the returning players with the motivation to play a complete 80 minutes — assuming it only took 80 minutes.

In the group stage of last year’s Shore Conference Tournament, Middletown South led CBA, 1-0, with a chance to clinch first place in the group if it could close out the Colts. Instead, CBA scored the equalizer on a penalty kick with 1:45 remaining and the game-winner exactly one minute later to snatch a win away from the Eagles.

“It’s about intensity,” Kapler said of the lessons learned from last year’s CBA loss. “It’s about who wants it more. It’s war out there for the last 10 minutes and we worked harder, so tonight we got the result.”

That loss to CBA was the first of three for Middletown South in tournament games in which the Eagles conceded the game-winning goal in the final nine minutes of regulation. That collection of games also included an SCT round-of-16 loss at Lacey in which the Lions erased a 2-0 Middletown South lead, including the equalizer in the final 30 seconds of regulation. Lacey went on to win on penalty kicks.

In the NJSIAA Central Jersey Group III final, Long Branch scored three goals in the final nine minutes to turn a 0-0 deadlock into a rout in ending Middletown South’s season.

With a wealth of returning talent from last year, Middletown South entered 2025 as a team deeply impacted by those late losses and determined to prevent them from happening again. This season, Middletown South has yet to lose a game in which it has held the lead and of the Eagles’ three losses and one tie, they have allowed either one or no goals in three of the four. In a rematch vs. Lacey during the group stage of the SCT, it was Middletown South that erased a 2-0 deficit and beat the Lions in overtime.

“Last year goes in your mind because we lost three knockout games like right at the last minute or so,” Riverso said. “Being able to put in that extra effort to seal off these wins and we have done that now with this game, Marlboro (in the quarterfinals) and Lacey (in group play). It takes that extra bit of effort to close out these games, especially against (CBA).”

Wednesday was the latest victory for the reformed version of Middletown South, which absorbed CBA’s aggressive push to equalize, dodged multiple close calls against Perry’s goal and regained control of the game for the final 15 minutes while still maintaining its defensive posture.

“All season long, we have been working on our stamina and I think it showed here,” Kapler said. “I don’t think any of us were tired. We could have gone another 20 minutes and played with the same intensity.”

“Ryan was obviously huge today and Charlie Welsh, who is in his first year with us, was fantastic today,” Riverso said. “You see him and he is rock solid back there. We had six clean sheets in a row until today and that’s a credit to (the defense) and how well they are playing together.”

Strada was also instrumental in the defensive effort thanks to his ability to hold the ball and carry it up the flanks against CBA’s athletic collection of defenders and midfielders. While the corner kicks helped create the goals, Strada’s ability with the ball at his feet repeatedly returned the action to CBA’s end of the field and forced the Colts to restart their attack, which used up precious seconds on the clock.

“We were kind of in the same boat vs. Marlboro (in the quarterfinals on Monday),” Strada said. “We couldn’t give up a goal, so it was just constant effort from the whole team. I was really working to track back and that’s something that’s really different in this type of game because you have to protect the lead, or else you go home. I think everyone has that mindset, especially in the semifinals against CBA. It’s just constantly in your head that you have to protect the lead.”

The presence of Strada was missing last year, when he spent his junior year playing in Major League Soccer’s MLS Next program. This year, however, he returned to the high-school team a more well-rounded player and with the ability to be exactly the kind of player the Eagles needed to push their battle-tested roster over the top.

“He’s that difference-maker from last year to now,” Riverso said of Strada. “It shows with the guys when he is around. When they knew that he was playing, the excitement for the season was just that much greater. He is just that kind of guy.”

After Wednesday’s upset, Middletown South will prepare itself to go for one more. The Eagles played a competitive regular-season game vs. Colts Neck on a Saturday morning in September, with the Cougars prevailing, 1-0, on a first-half goal by 20-goal scorer and one of Wednesday’s heroes, Sean Moore.

“We want that game back,” Riverso said. “It was a game we felt we were very competitive in. It’s just that their shot went in and ours didn’t. It’s going to be a great game. They have some dangerous players, but so do we.”

This year’s Middletown South team is just the second team in program history to reach the SCT championship game and if it can flip the score on Colts Neck Saturday afternoon in Neptune, the Eagles will have made school history with their first ever Shore Conference title in boys soccer.

“We knew coming into the year it would be a special year,” Strada said. “We obviously haven’t been here as players for 20 years, but we know how it hasn’t been as successful as other programs. So we were really trying to change things this year and I feel like we have done well, but it means nothing if we can’t get the job done on Saturday.”