How St. Thomas boys soccer team put together perfect start to 2023 season

DOVER — Since the start of the season the St. Thomas Aquinas High School boys soccer team has been on a roll and thus far hasn’t shown any signs of slowing down.

Through eight games the Saints are undefeated and sitting atop the Division III standings despite a sophomore-laden roster that features only two seniors. The Saints extended their win streak to eight with Tuesday's 1-0 win at Raymond.

“I’m a little surprised,” said second-year coach Ethan Rech, “but I knew we had a good group of players coming in.”

Leadership strong for Saints

STA is led by senior co-captains Owen Simas and Ryan Whiting. Simas plays striker and scored six goals in the first four games and in doing so eclipsed the program’s record for career goals previously held by Ross Suleski.

Whiting anchors the defense from the center back position.

“I feel like we were going to improve from last season,” Simas said. “Our goal is to win as many games as we can. We have a tough schedule coming up but so far I think we’ve done pretty well.”

The Saints are heading into a crucial stretch where they play six of seven games on the road capped by back-to-back matches against 2021 finalist Campbell and defending champion Gilford.

“Being on the road is difficult,” Whiting said. “We’re ready for that challenge, we accept that challenge and hopefully we’ll rise to the occasion. We know that these six or seven games could make or break our season.”

STA is off to a good start in that regard. The Saints won their seventh straight Tuesday with a 5-0 whitewash of Prospect Mountain in Alton to sweep the season series with the Timberwolves.

“Now we’re getting to the part of the schedule where we’re starting to travel to different fields,” Rech said. “We go into someone else’s home, and everybody now realizes we’re (8-0) and they want to get that one loss on the board for us, so we’ve got to stay mentally strong.”

“We know that at the moment we have a target on our back,” Whiting said.

St. Thomas knows it can't be complacent

The returning players are mindful of what happened last season when the Saints started 4-0 only to lose their next four games. They finished 11-6 including a loss in the first round of the playoffs.

“We were in the same position last year,” Whiting said. “We don’t want to get ahead of ourselves. We take it one game at a time. We want to stay grounded.”

“We’ve mentioned it,” Rech said. “We lost only four seniors so the guys returning know very well what happened last year. It’s something that we keep in the back of our heads to keep motivating them.”

More: Here are 21 Seacoast high school boys soccer players to watch in 2023

Through eight games the Saints had outscored the opposition 25-7 and allowed more than one goal only once. They’ve scored three or more goals in six of the eight games.

“Obviously, we’ve had a really strong start to our year but every single game we work to improve, and I think we’ve done that … so we can get a little bit farther than we did last year,” Whiting said.

“You try to keep it in the back of your head that it’s a good run,” Rech said, “but you’ve got to take each game one at a time and build off of it.”

St. Thomas has had to weather the absence of Simas, who has been bothered by a hamstring injury that caused him to miss some time. Sophomore Angus Forman has picked up some of the scoring slack.

“We work well as a team and we all carry our weight really well,” Whiting said.

Big contributions from younger players

“Their growth is exciting to see,” Rech said. “There is still a need for more learning, I guess, but that will come over time.”

Sophomore wing Aaron Page is a creative forward and junior Will Hughes is a distributor in the midfield. On the back end the emergence of sophomore keeper Jeffrey Luchsinger has been huge.

“He was a total surprise to us all,” Whiting said. “That was definitely one of the biggest questions going into this year. Jeff has been real solid between the posts and kept us in a lot of games.”

“He’s been a great addition and he’s improving every game,” Rech said. “We’re excited to see how he continues to progress throughout the season.”

The Saints hope to benefit from last year’s experience and build on their momentum.

“Their confidence is high right now, but they need to stay focused and continue their success,” Rech said. “The next four or five games are really going to test the guys. They have something to prove that this isn’t a fluke, so we’ll have to go into someone else’s home and come away with a positive result.”

This article originally appeared on Fosters Daily Democrat: St. Thomas Aquinas boys soccer team starts strong in 2023