Last year’s Valley Stream North girls’ soccer team lacked some experience, but it returns 15 players with 10 of them being starters.
Coach Dan Tronolone is optimistic the growing pains the Spartans experienced last fall will pay dividends this season.
“I’m confident that the experience we gained last season will help put us in a position to compete and win more games,” Tronolone said. “We had a little trouble being consistent, so we’re focussed on building consistency and putting together full games instead of just parts of games.”
Despite a lackluster 2024 campaign with a 3-10-1 record, there’s something to build upon and lessons to learn from.
“We do have six girls that this will be their third year on varsity,” Tronolone said. “We have some strong senior leadership and I think we’ll be a little more athletic all across the board so hopefully all those things will contribute to more success.”
Tronolone will lean on the leadership from four senior captains in defensemen Jules Dekel, Claudia Sherman and Zady Munguia and forward Aryana Philips. Sherman earned an All-County award, while Munguia earned herself an All-County honorable mention. Dekel, Sherman and Philips are all returning captains.
“Probably Sherman [our go-to],” Tronolone said. “She plays extremely hard. She gives 100 percent every game. She’s a vocal leader, so she’s probably the girl we would to, the most.”
In order to have improvement, they’ll need some other players to step up. Junior and all-county honorable mention forward Daniella Morales will be a name to watch as she makes her third appearance on varsity. Junior midfielder Paige Fessler, who was All-County last season, will also make her third appearance at the varsity level.
In addition to the veteran starters, North will rely on two freshman who made impacts as eighth graders; Forward Gabby Giammarino and center midfielder Leilani Martin-Santos.
“I think this year, we’re kind of just going to rely on speed and athleticism,” Tronolone said. “I think this year we’re more athletic and we have a couple young girls who are pretty good and can do stuff with the ball that should help us.”
They’ll play a 4-3-3 formation, considering this year will be Sherman, Mungia and Dekel’s third year playing together and they like to play with a flat four in the back.
“So, we’ll go with that to start,” Tronolone said. “Could possibly switch to having two forwards and for midfielders, but right now I think we’re gonna go three and three.”
There’s always room for improvement no matter how well or poor things are going, but Tronolone set some expectations ahead of their first non-conference matchup against Island Trees.
“In our conference, I think we can definitely be more competitive,” Tronolone said. “I think we can definitely win more games, trying to shoot for .500 in the conference. Obviously, we’d like to get off to a good start the first half of the season, so that we can kind of ride the momentum and see where it goes from there.”
