Moore of the Same: Colts Neck Beats Manalapan in Boys Soccer September Showdown

MANALAPAN – Since he started playing high school soccer as a freshman two years ago, scoring has come easy to Colts Neck junior Sean Moore.

This season, however, would be his first playing without his older brother, Kyle — who was also a First-Team All-Shore forward — alongside him at the top of the Cougars formation.

Perhaps having his brother helped Sean Moore as an underclassman, but through two games this season, he has proven ready to lead the way and his Cougars teammates are ready follow him.

Facing a Manalapan team ranked No. 1 in the Shore Sports Insider Preseason Top 10 Monday, Moore scored his third goal in two games to open the season and No. 3 Colts Neck took down the Braves, 1-0, to submit their early claim on the No. 1 ranking in the Shore Conference one year after winning the program’s first Shore Conference Tournament championship.

“When he scored the goal, I said, ‘This is what he does,'” Colts Neck coach Art Collier said. “You can double-team him all you want, but it’s hard to do it for 80 minutes. He’s going to get loose and if he gets loose, it’s one or two goals and as long as we’re keeping clean sheets, that’s enough.”

“We knew this was a big game, so we had to come out more aggressive in the second half,” Moore said. “They (Manalapan) dominated the first half, but we ended up wanting it more.”

Coming off a 4-0 win over Rumson-Fair Haven in its season-opener on Saturday and facing a Manalapan team missing three starters, Colts Neck plodded through a quiet first half, during which neither team generated a sustained attack, but Manalapan controlled the majority of possession. The Braves out-shot Colts Neck, 2-1, on a pair of corner kicks by senior Ethan Lustig that Colts Neck senior goalkeeper Liam Collura had to parry over the bar to keep them from going in.

Colts Neck, meanwhile, manufactured only one shot, but it was the closest call of the half for either side: a shot by senior center back Dillon Younger off a free kick by senior Ben Kazani that rung the left post.

“We’re a family,” Moore said. “Our chemistry is amazing. We all stick together. We never fight on the field. We always keep it positive.”

In the second half, Colts Neck took over control of possession and made something of it 24 minutes into the second half. Moore checked back to settle the ball, played it back to Kazani and made a run toward the right post. Kazani drove the ball at the Manalapan line and played a pass through to Moore that hit him in stride. The junior outran the Manalapan defense to the ball and Moore ripped a shot inside the near right post for his third goal of the season and 53 of his career to date.

Sean Moore slips through and finishes a ball from Ben Kazani to give Colts Neck a 1-0 lead on Manalapan in the 64th. pic.twitter.com/HdMNieOFQj

— Matt Manley (@Matt_Manley) September 8, 2025

“We always work those one-two’s,” Moore said of his chemistry with Kazani. “I always go around the defender and he always puts it right there.”

“We’re always looking to get the ball to our two guys up top, C.J. (Collins) and Sean,” Kazani said. “They are great players, they’ve got a lot of pace and we want to try to find them in behind the defense. Then, when they get the ball, we want to play off of them and go from there.”

Manalapan silenced Moore in the first half, but the Shore Conference’s 2024 scoring leader made his presence felt in the second. With the game still 0-0, he nearly drew a foul in the box that instead lead to him drawing a yellow card for dissent when objecting to the non-call. After the goal, he got free inside the box again, but had a shot blocked by a hustling Manalapan defender.

“Pressure causes mistakes in high school soccer,” Collier said. “The other thing is if the midfielders press a little bit, maybe Sean gets a little more space. Then, Sean just has to be patient, and he was. Getting space is going to be difficult for him, so if he is able to be big, hold the ball up and wait, then everybody else does a good job with the ball at their feet, it’s going to make him that much better.”

Moore’s last shot was a low strike on the ground that bent around Manalapan junior goalkeeper Chase Lee, but hit the far right post.

Kazani is coming off a season in which he produced two goals and eight assists while playing the six for Colts Neck and has moved up in the formation to cover for All-Shore midfielder and 2025 graduate Sam Gershon.

“This year, I’ve had to step up and play the ten because we had a hole there,” Kazani said. “That just helps build our chemistry, because I know he (Moore) is going to make something happen if I get him the ball. He is going to be the player we’re looking to target, but we also have C.J. up top if defenses are over-committing to stopping Sean and my job is just to try to make the right play. Sean is obviously going to be that first option, but we know how capable C.J. and Dean Natale are when they are on the field, so I just try to balance it out.”

On the other end of the field, Colts Neck did not let Manalapan mount a second-half attack. The Braves moved Lustig around the formation, starting him at the six and moving him up in the second half following the Moore goal.

“We wanted to move up on their outside backs because they were getting way too much time,” Kazani said of Colts Neck’s second-half adjustment. Their six was wide open most of the time. Lustig is a great player. He is more so a sitting back in the six and we wanted to avoid that ball to him by pressing up on their backs and avoid them playing through him. He is a great player, we know what he is capable of and we wanted to make sure he did as little as possible.”

“I’m honestly kind of stunned at the level of poise a lot of these newer players have had,” Collier said. “Daneil Macedo in the midfield, that kid is playing lights out. He is like a smaller Ben Kazani and he comes out with the ball on every tackle, never fouls, makes beautiful passes, never gives the ball up. Jonah Chiang is playing tremendous in the middle. So is Gabe (Kruglyansky), so is C.J. on the outside. It’s just a whole host of guys who are doing a really good job with the ball at their feet. And Manalapan was doing the same thing, but the difference was, they were doing it 50 yards away from the net.”

Coming off a season in which he scored 20 goals to go with 13 assists while earning a First-Team All-Shore selection, Lustig already had the attention of Colts Neck’s defense and that was exacerbated by the absence of Manalapan senior midfielder Ethan Rosenfeld and senior forward Edoardo Russo. Rosenfeld had a family commitment that kept him from attending the game, according to Manalapan coach Brandon Downey, while Russo was serving the first game of a two-game suspension for the red card he drew in Thursday’s 2-2 draw vs. Freehold Township in the season opener.

Manalapan was also without junior center back Nick DeSantis due to injury.

With another clean sheet and a locked-in defense led by Younger and fellow returning senior center back Ryan Spencer, Manalapan senior goalkeeper Liam Collura has posted two shutouts in two games in his return to the starting job in goal. Collura started as a freshman and moved to the field as a junior when All-Shore goalkeeper Justin Appel returned to the program in 2024. In the offseason, Collura and fellow senior keeper Sal Vaina trained with Appel to prepare them for the task of replacing Appel this fall.

“Liam went from a goalkeeper who is a basketball player and is very athletic — and this was Sal, also — into goalkeepers that have a lot of technical skill, and they got it from Justin,” Collier said. “There were a few plays where I thought, ‘He has been watching too much Justin Appel film.’ There was one play where Liam chest-trapped the ball and waited over it and I have never seen him do something like that.”

The Braves were seeking revenge for Colts Neck handling them, 3-0, in the Shore Conference Tournament round of 16 – an unusual case in which two of the top teams met early in the tournament because of the predetermined pairings in the World Cup format of the SCT. Colts Neck, meanwhile, was out to prove it is still worthy of the No. 1 spot in the Shore Conference rankings despite losing five starters to graduation – including the program’s all-time scoring leader in Kyle Moore.

“We were excited to play them because there is a big history between us and Manalapan,” Kazani said.

“There is a lot on our backs,” Moore said. “Everyone wants to beat the Shore Conference champs, but we just want it more now.”