Holmdel soccer players celebrate a victory, posing with a banner and a trophy on the field.

Unbeaten No More: Holmdel Knocks Off Point Beach in Coaches Cup Final

Matt Manley|October 24, 2026|Last Updated October 24, 2026

NEPTUNE — The last time the Holmdel boys soccer team won an NJSIAA sectional championship, the Hornets preceded it with a victory in the Shore Conference Coaches Cup.

This year’s Holmdel team is hoping to follow the same script.

After entering the 2026 Coaches Cup Tournament with a 2-11 record, the Hornets capped a four-game run to the championship by handing Point Pleasant Beach its first loss of the season to claim the program’s second Coaches Cup championship in four seasons. Senior Dylon Grimadli scored the golden goal on a free kick in the 16th minute of overtime to set off the celebration and end Point Beach’s bid for a perfect season.

“It wasn’t even so much about winning for us,” Grimaldi said. “Just getting goals on the table and keeping the other team out of the goal. Point Beach came in with over eighty goals, which might be eight times the amount we have. I give it up to coach Matt Isaacson, coach (James) Gelpke, and coach Anton (Arena), who deserves a lot more credit than he gets. We have done a lot of finishing in practice, and I have to give it up to my captains: Turner (Foster), Antonio (Zambito), Lucas (Nobrega), Kyle (Silberman), and Jax (Londell).”

 

For more than 95 minutes, Holmdel’s defense held one of the state’s highest-scoring teams without a goal to set the stage for Grimadli’s golden goal. Point Beach entered the game with 89 goals in 16 games for an average of 5.56 per game, including 11 goals over the course of the first three rounds of the Coaches Cup.

Grimaldi narrowly missed giving Holmdel the lead in the eighth minute when he slammed a 30-yard shot off the crossbar, and there was not a better scoring opportunity for either team until the 96th minute. Grimaldi drew the foul just outside the top of the 18-yard box that set up the deciding free kick. Both Grimaldi and fellow senior Turner Foster lined up in position to take the kick, and it was Grimaldi who took the shot, bending it around the Point Beach wall and into the left side of the goal, with Point Beach sophomore goalkeeper Parker Sario getting a piece of it with his diving save attempt.

“I lined up with Turner Foster, and we usually alternate on free kicks based on where the wall is,” Grimaldi said. “Coach (Arena) said, ‘Look what they are giving you.’ I saw the top end wide open, and I had to put it there, and that’s what I did.”

 

Anthony Arena is in his third year as an assistant under Isaacson and is one of the Shore Conference’s all-time leading scorers. He scored 81 goals during his three-year career at Holmdel, during which the Hornets won a Shore Conference Tournament title in 2017 and back-to-back Group II championships in 2017 and 2018.

“We have had Division I guys at Holmdel,” Grimaldi said. “This year, we don’t have that, but we are a whole team. It’s a credit to the work we did in the offseason, whether that’s the Holmdel Park runs, staying after practice with Anton getting up shots off. It’s all routine. We put the work in during practice, and it shows in the games.”

Holmdel nearly won the game in the first minute of overtime, when Sario made an initial save and junior Nick Pesce got to the rebound in time to fire a 12-yard shot just wide of the left post.

Pesce’s shot followed the game-long trend of Holmdel generating shots it could not convert, mostly thanks to a strong performance by Sario. The sophomore goalkeeper saved 10 shots to help the Garnet Gulls stave off a 17-8 advantage in shots for Holmdel.

 

Point Beach’s two standout scorers — junior Evan Hajeski and senior Brody Powers — ran into a Holmdel defense that has been tested throughout the season while playing in the Class A North division of the Shore Conference, which includes four teams in the Shore Sports Insider Top 10 (Manalapan, Christian Brothers Academy, Marlboro and Colts Neck) and the reigning Shore Conference Tournament champion (Middletown South). Hajeski (36 goals, 16 assists) got a clean shot on a near-post cross in the final minutes of the first half for his best chance, while Powers’s best opportunity came on a near-post cross that was broken up by the Holmdel defense.

“Holmdel soccer has always been a family,” Grimadli said. “Just because two people in a family aren’t there doesn’t mean the rest of the group can’t step up and carry us the whole. At the start of the season, we were too reliant on the two guys who were out. When we started relying on our coaches and becoming more self-reliant, we started to get the wins and score more goals.”

Senior Anu Adesina, junior Owen Mulligan, junior Devon Lau and senior Antonio Zambito put in the defensive work in the back in front of senior goalkeeper Ryan Frigiola. Zambito is one of the returning leaders from 2025, and he is playing just six months after surgery to recover from a torn ACL.

“He is the biggest leader that we have,” Holmdel coach Matt Isaacson said of Zambito. “Before his injury, we knew he was going to be a captain. Everybody migrates wherever he goes and listens to whatever he says. He came back in six months from an ACL injury, which is incredible. When he told me there was a chance he was coming back, I thought there was no way. He worked incredibly hard. He’s still not a hundred percent, but just to have him out there with his leadership goes such a long way.”

Holmdel opened the season 1-9 and dropped to 2-11 with a 2-1 loss to Howell on Oct. 10. The Hornets grew accustomed to playing without starters due to injury this season, with Zambito missing the first month and top 2025 scorer and senior striker Lucas Nobrega missing the entire season due to his own ACL. In the Coaches Cup, Holmdel overcame the absence of two starters — senior Jax Londell and junior Yaseen Moustafa — after they were involved in a car accident that resulted in minor injuries for the two players, according to Isaacson. The duo also missed Wednesday’s 3-1 semifinal win over Matawan.

“We were beaten up the first month, two months of the season,” Isaacson said. “We are playing some of the best teams game after game. We also got a couple bad bounces, and the injuries didn’t help either. It would have been real easy when we were 1-9 to just give up and hang it up there, but there was never any negativity. We kept the positive attitude every day, and they just knew that it wasn’t going to be easy. But once we get to the state tournament, we’ll be battle-tested against all the top teams in the Shore, and we can make a run. That’s where we’re at now.”

With the four Coaches Cup wins, especially the last two wins over 10-win Matawan and 16-win Point Beach, Holmdel has gone from the cusp of completely missing the NJSIAA Tournament to pushing for a first-round home game in the Central Jersey Group II Tournament.

Point Beach, meanwhile, will regroup as it prepares to be the No. 1 seed in the Central Jersey Group I section. The Garnet Gulls did not enter the Shore Conference Tournament and will not enter the state tournament undefeated. However, they still have a golden opportunity to win the program’s first-ever sectional championship in boys soccer.

The Coaches Cup final has produced two sectional champions, including Holmdel in 2023 and Long Branch in 2024. In 2023, Holmdel was a dejected Coaches Cup champion after failing to qualify for the SCT with an 8-2-1 record. This season, the experience was more uplifting.

Whatever the tone of Holmdel’s celebration, the Hornets hope it is a precursor to another trophy celebration at the end of the Central Group II tournament.

“I think going into states, the momentum is definitely necessary,” Grimaldi said. “Moving up the bracket could give us an easier matchup and maybe even a home matchup. Point Beach was a one- or two-seed in the states, and they still will be, which I think shows that we can play with a top team if we play to our potential and keep playing unselfish. That’s what we have been doing, and that’s what is leading to our success.”

 

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