By Chris Goldberg
TopLaxRecruits.com, Posted 6/25/18
WESTTOWN, Pa. – For the third straight year Brotherhood has won the 2019 AA Division championship at the Victory Events Boys’ Summer Slam.
On Sunday Brotherhood (NJ) raced to an 8-3 lead and held off Zombies (PA), 8-7, for the title at Westtown School.
Brotherhood, 11-0 so far this year with a title at Prime Time, went 6-0 and outscored its first five foes, 47-17 – including a 9-5 win over Zombies earlier Sunday.
“It all starts with the GBs,” said Brotherhood 2019 attackman Max Paparozzi (Northern Highland-NJ), a Wagner commit who had two goals and two assists. “We came out in the first game and outplayed them in the GBs. We planned on doing that again. We also planned on sliding with the body, but in a couple goals we didn’t got there. We got the win; it was sloppy at the end, not the way we wanted to end it.”
Zombies, comprised of players from Northeast PA, staged a comeback behind 2020 midfielder/FO specialist Anthony Capruscio (Crestwood, PA-high 126 goals in 2018 HS season), who had three goals and an assist and pulled his team within 8-7 with his third goal and an assist to TJ herron (Dallas, 2020 ATT) with 1:45 to play. But Capruscio was hit with a penalty with 1:08 to play and Brotherhood held onto the final possession to cinch it. Michael Starbuck (Dallas, 2020 ATT) also had two goals and Wyatt Malia (Crestwood, 2020 attack) scored once while David DeSousa (Central Dauphin, 2020) had seven saves.
The rest of the game belonged to Brotherhood, which led, 4-1, and then 5-2 at halftime before stretching it to 8-3 as John Corry (Glen Rock, 2019 ATT) added two goals and one assist and Travis Hinds (Riverdell, 2019 ATT), Joseph Nirchio (Northern Highland, 2019 MF), Kyle Muldoon (Perarl River-NY, 2019 MF) and Erik Fioccola (Fairlawn, 2019 ATT) each scored once.
“Our chemistry is insane,” said paparozzi. “We have had the same group for 5 or 6 years and we know where each other is going to be on the field. We execute all the plays.”
Corry said the team enjoys playing together.
“It all starts with our chemistry, as Max said,” he said “It’s easy to pass it around when you trust everyone. It’s easy to feed when you know they will catch it and score.
“Our goal is to not lose the whole summer. So far we have done that. We want to keep doing that and win every tournament.”
