Seeing double: Winooski boys’ soccer goes back-to-back
Members of the Winooski boys’ soccer team celebrate their state championship. Photo courtesy of Winooski School District
If you had asked first-year boys’ soccer head coach Brad Agoos in September about Winooski High School’s chances of repeating their championship run this fall, he probably would have laughed. Instead, his team stands alone in Division IV for a second straight year.
The Spartans bested previously unbeaten and no. 1 seed Twin Valley 1-0 at Applejack Stadium in Manchester on Nov. 4.
Wins didn’t come as easily as last year for Winooski. In addition to facing the ostensibly impossible task of replacing eight seniors, the Spartans also opened up their season against formidable opponents. They kicked off the season at home to Burlington, a talented team that would make it to this year’s Division I semifinals, and lost 7-0. Three days later, the Spartans were shut out again against Rice, one of this year’s eventual Division II finalists. After picking up their first victory against Richford in league play, they had to travel to face Burlington again.
“It was a difficult start,” Agoos said, “but I think we got better and better if you look through the season.”
They certainly did. Those three losses at the beginning of the season were the Spartans’ only three as they enjoyed an unblemished run in Division IV. After eking out a couple close victories early on, the boys started to hit their stride come October.
The energy began to shift with a dramatic 1-0 victory at home against Twinfield. After an intense defensive battle, star senior Abdoul Lailati scored in the final minutes to give Winooski the win.
“Before the game, (coach said) if we get this win, we’re in a good spot,” Lailati said recently, reflecting on that pivotal contest. “That put a lot of pressure on the guys. We went into the game thinking Twinfield is gonna be hard to score on.”
The team realized they needed to steel themselves. “We were undefeated at the time, in our league, so we were all kind of getting cocky,” senior goalkeeper Sam Freije said. “As soon as that game happened, afterwards, we started to get a little bit more serious. We can’t just rely on Abdoul to score every single goal for us, (we realized), everyone needs to do their own part.”
It’s a philosophy Agoos instilled from day one. The Spartans spent a lot of time in training working on defending as a unit, ensuring everyone knew their roles. Agoos placed an emphasis on staying connected, and those details paid off in a big way.
“Those little things that we do in training and warmups are the things that bring teammates together,” Lailati said. “Saying, ‘Hey, you need to do this, hey, you need to do that,’ it really brought us together as a team. I think from that we had the bigger vision, of course.”
That stress on connection and defensive organization proved vital down the stretch. The defense markedly improved throughout the year, with the Spartans not conceding a single goal over the last three weeks of the season.
“The strength of the team is we always knew what we wanted to do,” Agoos said. “We started to dominate games but not get many goals. We got into this pattern of just being really, really tough defensively. We didn’t really give up a ton of chances. It’s pretty cliche, but defense wins championships.”
With Abdoul and Co. in attack, the Spartans spelled danger for any opponent, and teams began to try to sit more and more players back to counter them. That resulted in long bouts of possession for the Spartans, but it could be difficult to break opponents down. Still, Winooski’s players kept believing.
“Things started getting better, and that hope just built up as we went through,” Lailati said.
In some ways, it’s a surprise the season came together at all. The team was hurting for numbers early on, and throughout the season the squad was pretty thin. Players had to take on heavy minutes. The soccer season is short in Vermont, and the games come thick and fast in the compact window. Fatigue loomed as a constant enemy of the Spartans, something of which Agoos was acutely aware.
Add in that some of Winooski’s most important players almost didn’t play soccer this season.
Senior defender Nick Ferdinand hadn’t played since his freshman year on JV and had to be persuaded by both Lailati and Freije to join the team. Originally a striker, Ferdinand was flexible and allowed himself to be deployed further and further back as the season went on.
“I was like, ‘I’m better at defense. I might as well become center back,’” Ferdinand said.
For all his recruiting, Freije himself hadn’t played the year before. Instead, he played receiver for the football team at South Burlington High. But this year, he knew he wanted to play soccer. He was thrown in goal early on but embraced the challenge.
“By the end of the season, he looked like a legitimate goalkeeper,” Agoos said.
The lights are still bright for the Spartans. Lailati, Ferdinand and Freije will all graduate this year, but they are the only three seniors on a talented young team of mostly freshmen and sophomores. Are we witnessing a dynasty in the making?