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11/22/2021 11:00 PMFor the third time in the Class S State Tournament, the Old Saybrook boys' soccer team found itself going into overtime when the Rams faced Canton in the championship game. By scoring three goals in OT, the Rams once again found a way to prevail by posting a 4-1 victory versus Canton to claim their third-straight state title and the seventh in program history.
No. 2 seed Old Saybrook took on 8th-seeded Canton in the Class S State Tournament final at Dillon Stadium in Hartford on Nov. 21. Junior captain Bradley Kulmann netted two goals, including the go-ahead score in overtime, while fellow junior captain Cam DeAngelo had a goal with an assist to lead the Rams to a 4-1 OT victory against the Warriors. Sophomore Kevin DeCapua added a goal for Old Saybrook, which finished with a record of 19-0-3 for a season that also saw the team win a share of the Shoreline Conference championship.
With the win in the final, Old Saybrook Head Coach Steve Waters earned his 10th state title as a head coach and his first as the Rams' head coach. Waters, who won his nine prior state titles at Farmington High School, was an assistant coach with Old Saybrook when the team won the state championship in 2019. Waters is the all-time winningest head coach in the history of Connecticut high school boys' soccer with 584 career victories.
Coach Waters felt that Old Saybrook was well-prepared heading into the Class S championship game. Waters said the Rams had been working hard to get ready for that moment since the first week of the season.
"The preparation started from basically day one. We call it training instead of practice. When you practice, you practice day to day. When you train, you train for the season," Coach Waters said. "Whatever we do in week one in training has something to do with week two, week three, and as the process goes on."
DeAngelo scored the first goal of the state final to give Old Saybrook a 1-0 lead with 12 minutes left in the opening half. The Rams took their one-goal edge into halftime, but then with 31 minutes remaining in the game, Canton scored a goal to knot the contest at 1-1, which was how it stood at the end of regulation.
Prior to overtime, Coach Waters told his players to try to avoid distractions and remember how much work it took them to get to that point.
"We talked about how much we worked to get here. Take a breath, like we did in the semifinals. We had to take ourselves out of the emotion of the stadium and the environment. Relax together in the locker room, and then we'll come out and play," said Waters. "Every team that gets this far thinks they deserve to win, but they have to earn it. How do we earn it?"
Kulmann put the Rams up 2-1 when he scored on an assist from DeAngelo with eight minutes left in the first overtime period. Then, with 10 minutes to go in the second OT, DeCapua sent one into the back of the net to increase Old Saybrook's lead to 3-1. Kulmann followed by scoring his second goal of the night for the 4-1 final. Senior goalie Ryan Slisz made nine saves to help the Rams achieve the Class S three-peat after having claimed the crown in 2018 and 2019.
"It was a culmination of the work that we put in. We played 22 games, and we didn't lose one. We went game by game. We didn't say let's win this game, let's win that game—we were just playing situation by situation," Coach Waters said. "We started three seniors, three juniors, and three sophomores. When you take in the youthfulness of these guys, they played beyond their maturity, without question."
To make the Class S championship game, Old Saybrook notched a 5-3 overtime victory against No. 6 seed Somers at Veterans Stadium in New Britain on Nov. 18. With the Rams down a goal with two seconds left in regulation, DeAngelo was fouled in the box and awarded a penalty kick. The junior captain heard a player on Somers say, "Hey 18, don't miss." DeAngelo responded back, "Don't worry, I won't." DeAngelo then buried the penalty kick to send the game to overtime.
In overtime, DeAngelo and senior captain Nick Rothman scored goals to give Old Saybrook a 5-3 win in a game where the Rams had trailed 2-0 and 3-1. After winning in dramatic fashion, Coach Waters felt that the victory had a little bit of "Miracle on Ice" to it."
"It was an absolute 'Miracle on Ice' type of response by the players," said Waters. "I don't know how they found the fortitude to come out with a win, being down 2-0 and then 3-1 with six minutes to go. I attribute it a lot to our fitness factor and our emotional and psychological dominance."
In its four Class S State Tournament games, Old Saybrook scored 14 total goals, and six of them came in overtime. Coach Waters had the Rams go through a fitness test to help them get ready for crucial moments like that. DeAngelo said that test helped Old Saybrook get "10 percent" better than its opponents, and he believes that extra 10 percent led them to the Class S title.
"In the beginning of the season, Coach Waters was set in making sure we were able to physically compete with any team. If you want to win games, you have to be 10 percent better than other teams," DeAngelo said. "That's where that 10 percent came in—our physical ability. Physically and mentally, we were just 10 times stronger than a lot of the teams we played."
Coach Waters believes that one of the big keys to Old Saybrook's success is the players' reliance on one another. Every player knows that they have to do their job, but if they struggle, they also know that they have their teammates behind them. As the Rams battled through numerous overtime periods, their faith in each other helped carry them through that grueling gauntlet.
"They had a certain reliance on each other, all doing their part and filling their role in the game. If you didn't do your role, they would cover you. We had your back. No matter what you did or didn't do, we were going to cover whatever happened in front of us," said Waters. "Our style of play is a bit chaotic. We were going to make a lot of mistakes. In making mistakes, you have to cover each other's backs, and that's what these guys did."
Old Saybrook had to replace a huge class of graduated seniors coming into the 2021 season. DeAngelo said that the Rams initially had doubts about how good they could be, but as the team continued to work together, they began to see the light. By focusing on one game at a time and competing as a cohesive unit, Old Saybrook finished another campaign as the Class S state champions.
"A lot of us came into this season not thinking a lot of it. We just lost 22 seniors and, coming in with just three, we thought this could be a rough season," DeAngelo said. "We all had a common goal, just to go game by game. That's what pushed us through. We didn't look through two or three games ahead. We stuck to our task of what we have to do to win that game. We stuck together as one unit and one team."
The three seniors on the Old Saybrook boys' soccer team are captains Nicholas Scalzo and Rothman, along with Slisz; DeAngelo and Kulmann are junior captains for the Rams, whose junior class also features Michael Kapji, Ryan Stratton, Peter Wisialowski, Noah Skiles, Jack Forrestt, Juan Quevedo, and Aidan Gilson.
The sophomores on the squad are DeCapua, Drew Kulmann, Brayden Cody, Jacob DeAngelo, and Lucas Webb. The freshmen on the team are Brendan Cassella, Liam Roberts, Felipe Dutra, Michael Yuri, and Jack Morin.
Coach Waters is joined by Assistant Coach Grant Willis.