Shore Sports Insider 2024 Boys Soccer Coach of the Year: Bill Rohr, Long Branch

The 2024 high-school soccer season marked the start of Bill Rohr’s career as a head coach and his first job would be leading a program that was in the middle of a stretch of five consecutive winning seasons and seven in a row with a winning percentage of .500 or better.

Through the first 12 games of Long Branch’s boys soccer season, that streak was as good as over. The Green Wave opened the season with just four returning starters and its third head coach in the last three seasons. To make matters worse, the play results reflected a team in transition: Long Branch lost 10 of those first 12 matches. For a program that played in sectional finals in 2019 and 2021 and had not experienced a losing season since 2016, it was a shock to the system.

Rohr and his staff, which included 2023 head coach Tim Farrell as part of a role switch, kept morale high and one month later, the Green Wave were the toast of the Shore and Rohr on his way to the 2024 Shore Sports Insider Coach of the Year Award.

Under Rohr’s direction, Long Branch turned a 2-10 start into a Shore Conference Coaches Cup championship, the first NJSIAA sectional championship for the Green Wave since 1997 and a 12-11 finish that gave Long Branch its sixth straight winning season and eighth straight with a winning percentage of at least .500.

As bad as a 2-10 record through 12 games looked on paper, it was not an impossible dream to sell. Long Branch’s young squad had competed against one of the tougher schedules of any team in the Shore Conference or among the NJSIAA Central Jersey Group III field and the Green Wave still had an opportunity to salvage the season with a strong showing in the tournaments.

With a 2-1, overtime loss to eventual Group IV champion Southern in the final game of the Shore Conference Tournament group stage, Long Branch missed out on a spot in the Shore Conference Tournament and was relegated to the Shore Conference Coaches Cup – the tournament for teams that fail to qualify for the SCT. Although Long Branch was the No. 6 seed, it entered the tournament with an edge over other teams as a team from the Class A North division – the only A North team to miss the SCT – that suffered seven losses by a one-goal margin heading into the tournament and dropped nine of its 10 losses to teams that were ranked in the Shore Sports Insider Top 10 at some point during the season.

Despite enduring all those losses, Long Branch entered the postseason in high spirits and the results followed suit. The Green Wave steamrolled its first three Coaches Cup opponents by an aggregate total of 18-2, which set up a tournament championship against 2023 Group I champion Shore Regional. It was a step up in competition, but it did not slow down Rohr’s team. Long Branch rolled to a 3-0 win and its first Coaches Cup title in the fourth year of the tournament’s existence.

Armed with renewed confidence following its four-game rampage through the Coaches Cup, Long Branch entered the NJSIAA Tournament determined to add to the winning streak. As the No. 9 seed in the Central Jersey Group III section, the Green Wave were likely to spend its entire stay through the tournament on the road.

The mission started off strong with a 2-0 win at Hopewell Valley, but Long Branch’s five-game winning streak would immediately be put to the ultimate test. In the sectional quarterfinals, Long Branch was to travel to play No. 1 seed Colts Neck, which entered the tournament a perfect 17-0-2 after winning its first ever Shore Conference Tournament.

Through 40 minutes, the battle between SCT and Coaches Cup champions went how most would expect through. Colts Neck took a 2-0 advantage into halftime and while Rohr’s emphasis in keeping brothers Sean and Kyle Moore from scoring was successful in keeping the two brothers quiet, it did not prevent Colts Neck’s supporting cast from pushing in two first-half goals while shutting out the Green Wave.

Just as Long Branch did not waver after a bad start to the season, it did not break over its two-goal halftime deficit. Senior center back Evan Santiago lifted his team with a goal that broke the shutout in the second minute of the second half and junior Marvin Oyuela stunned Colts Neck with the equalizer in the 64th. Colts Neck had given away multi-goal leads four other times this season – to Manasquan, Manalapan, Christian Brothers Academy and Princeton – but had not lost any of those matches.

This time, though, Long Branch had the finishing touch. Junior Thomas Silva – who scored two goals vs. Shore in the Coaches Cup Final – scored the game-winner in the 78th minute off the second of senior captain Alejandro Lopez-Flores’s two assists. The defense and goalkeeper Carlos Gerardo Rodas finished off the second-half shutout against the Shore’s highest-scoring attack and Long Branch completed the upset of the season, 3-2.

Long Branch breaks through in the 74th minute on a header by Evan Santiago off a free kick by Alejandro Lopez-Flores. A minute later Johan Gomez buries a 25-yard bender for a 2-0 lead. pic.twitter.com/hClYMQ8Usn

— Matt Manley (@Matt_Manley) November 12, 2024

From there, the Green Wave could not be stopped in Central Jersey. Santiago again buried a clutch first goal to break a scoreless deadlock and classmate Johan Gomez added two late goals to give Long Branch three goals in the final five minutes and a 3-0 win at Middletown South.

Playing in the program’s third sectional final in six seasons and riding a nine-game winning streak, the Green Wave hung with No. 3 Steinert through a scoreless first half and Rodas kept it that way with a penalty-kick save early in the first half. The Green Wave responded with a scoring chance off a corner kick in the 53rd minute and Silva buried it for the lone goal of the game. Long Branch held strong for a 1-0 win and its first Central Group III final in 27 years.

Rohr’s bunch ran into a senior-led, battle-tested Shawnee side in the Group III semifinals and despite that, the Green Wave hung tough with the Renegades. If not for a controversial goal on which Shawnee’s goal-scorer appeared to be offsides, the Green Wave might have carried its postseason run into overtime in Medford. Instead, Shawnee knocked off Long Branch, 1-0, on the way to winning the Group III championship.

Rohr’s success in year one did not come easy, but it came at the right time and sets the program up for another successful season in 2025, when Long Branch will be more experienced from the start of the season – both on the field and at head coach. For both Rohr and the Green Wave, the good times are just getting started.

Matt Manley’s Coach of the Year “Ballot”

1. Bill Rohr, Long Branch

2. Guy Lockwood, Southern

3. Art Collier, Colts Neck

4. Dave Santos, Red Bank

5. Mike Konopka, Toms River East