Both Jason Valentino and Jim Ventriglia remember Saturdays during their youth when the town soccer field was filled with people.

All the players had different colored uniforms, the backs were adorned by sponsoring businesses, and it was in Ventriglia’s words “a big deal”. Now, he and Valentino hope to restore that, and took the first steps with a soccer program aimed at the area’s youth.

The program was organized through the Lloyd Recreation Department that offered seven sessions to area children on the turf practice field at Highland High School for grades K-5. The K-2 players would practice from 5:30 p.m. until 6:30 p.m. with grades 3-5 practicing from 6:30 until 8 p.m. Then on Saturday mornings, there would be a two-hour session for middle schoolers.

“I recognized that we needed something extra to offer to the kids in the community,” Valentino said. “I’ve talked to a number of people that seemed to have the same feelings.”
So, they went to the town of Lloyd, whose recreation director Frank Alfonso also is the Highland High School athletic director, and the soccer program was modeled after the town’s already successful basketball.

“We wanted to keep the costs low, provide a ball and a t-shirt and some good training and get more kids excited about soccer,” Valentino said.

Excitement about soccer has been lacking of late, and without a viable feeder program, the Highland High School soccer teams have struggled. The girls’ program recently lost its JV program, and still had a drop in numbers this year.

The boys’ program has also struggled in recent years.
Ventriglia coaches varsity soccer in Marlboro, another town without a viable feeder system, and it took him four years to build a program that won a Section 9 Class B championship in 2021 but struggled again in 2022.

“In Marlboro year after year, we had to fight that because there is no feeder program, as opposed to other teams we play,” he said. “They have that advantage, and Highland always had that advantage. I live in Highland, and I grew up in Highland. To not have that to be in a spot where this town was great, it was frustrating.”

That’s when Alfonso and Valentino brought their heads together to create this program, which started this fall, but there are already plans to expand it. The fall started with about 120 kids showing up, and the numbers faded a little as the weather got cooler and the days got shorter.

Valentino expects an increase through word of mouth.
“I thought at a minimum, we’d get 75 or 80, but it was certainly realistic to get over 100,” Valentino said. “The nice part is 90 percent of that turnout is between K through five, so we’ve got a lot of young development that’s going on.”

Throughout the seven sessions, half the time was spent working on skills and the other half of the session was spent applying those skills in scrimmages. They also were able to keep the ratio of kids to coaches low, creating ample opportunities for instruction as they go.

There’s a lot of coaching experience here also. In addition to Valentino and Ventriglia, volunteer coaches also included both varsity coaches, boys’ coach Cody Stecher and girls’ coach Heather Bragg.

“That’s fantastic,” Valentino said. “It’s experiential too, because a number of times varsity players will come down and interact with the kids, as well. They will come right over from practice, or even right from the game and they’re in uniform. The kids have had a couple of opportunities to interact with them, but it’s just a way for them to see what’s possible.”

A similar program is planned in the winter from January until the beginning of March, and by the spring they intend to be operating again as the Highland United Soccer Club, the program that fueled those championship teams that showed up starting in the 1980s.

“There’s no reason why we can’t get back to being recognized for our soccer successes in the future,” Valentino said.