It’s not often that teams find themselves making history, yet Wakefield High School’s varsity men’s soccer team has done it. This season has been nothing short of incredible for the team, featuring fantastic play all throughout and their best start to a season ever, going 14-4-1. With the regular season nearing its end, the team must focus on their conference games as they aim for first place.
As with any team, the coach is instrumental to the success of their season. Coach Anthony Calabria has been with the team for ten years and has constructed a very unique team this season, all with the goal of bringing the boys together and fostering a positive environment.
“I keep a small team so that everyone plays, so they’re always contributing,” Coach Calabria said. “When you’re contributing, you feel like you’re more a part of the team.”
This closeness has really fueled the team to work together, and the fact that many of the boys have played together for a number of years now has made a big difference. Goalkeeper and one of the co-captains, Evan Calabria, believes that this closeness is a key factor to the team’s success.
“We’ve been playing with each other for years now, so we’ve grown with each other and gotten better with each other,” Evan Calabria said. “We’re all close and friends, which has improved team camaraderie and our performance on the field.”
This fantastic performance, leading to the incredible record the boys have, is the best in school history. While the play has been excellent up to this point, everyone on the team, including co-captain Brooks Vice, knows the true goal of this season is bigger than just wins.
“[At the beginning,] we just wanted to get as many wins as possible, which has happened,” Vice said. “But [now] we just want to win a few games in states; hopefully we can do that this year.”
As the regular season winds down and playoffs loom, the team knows what they’re capable of and now must execute on it. Without a single conference or state championship win in school history, adding one to this already historic season would be the icing on the cake.
Ibra Ndiaye, Wakefield’s leading goal scorer with 23 goals and counting, knows the road up to this point has not been the smoothest, but also knows how important his teammates have been to their success.
“We’ve lost some games we shouldn’t have lost because we were missing some key players,” Ndiaye said. “We needed them on the field.”
While the successes of this season haven’t come easily, Coach Calabria has always had the enjoyment and happiness of his players in mind. Throughout all the ups and downs of this incredible year, he’s known that the best way to get his team to reach their true potential is to have a good time along the way. For Coach Calabria, fun means winning and winning means fun.
“The key is to make the season fun,” Coach Calabria said. “When you make the season fun, everybody is in.”
