The 2015 boys’ soccer season has been an adventure for Nativity.
For starters, the team didn’t have a coach until three days before the season began.
Once a coach was in place, some players still required physicals and didn’t join the team until a couple games into the season. Many of those were part of the cooperative with Shenandoah Valley or among the team’s large, and primarily Spanish-speaking, exchange student contingent.
Then came the injuries — five, in fact — all to regular starters, including one that forced a defender to play goalie for the first time.
The result? Not what one would expect given such challenges.
The Hilltoppers finished a perfect 10-0 in Schuylkill League play (14-4 overall) to claim the Division II title for the first time since 2009. They’ve earned berths in back-to-back Schuylkill League and District 11 Class A tournaments, and reeled off a 13-game win streak from Sept. 14 to Oct. 15.
Today, they take on Division I wild card Blue Mountain in the Schuylkill League semifinals for the second straight time at 5 p.m. at Pine Grove’s Cardinal Stadium. Division I champ Lehighton plays Division II wild card Schuylkill Haven — also for the second straight time — following at 7 p.m.
“It was interesting the first two or three weeks just trying to get the team organized,” Nativity first-year coach Paul Datte said, “let alone actually practice and play.”
Datte, still coaching as a volunteer, was named head coach Friday, Aug. 14. Fall practices started the following Monday. He knew the team well after volunteering as an assistant coach the three previous years that his son, Adrian, now a senior, played on the team.
Nativity made its first league playoff appearance in five years last season under then-first-year coach Matt Hamilton, who earned Republican-Herald All-Area Coach of the Year honors before relocating to Florida.
“I was prepared to be a voluntary assistant again, but not be the head coach,” Datte said. “We were kind of at the point where, ‘No coach, no team.’ And what a disappointment that would’ve been.”
John Crane volunteered to be Datte’s assistant, and former head coach Pete Laychock helped the team during preseason — a contribution Datte called “absolutely invaluable.”
But the team wasn’t out of the woods yet. The Hilltoppers were still missing players who hadn’t completed physicals and limped through a scrimmage with Tamaqua before starting the regular season 1-3 — getting outscored 18-5 during those games.
The roster, however, was slowly coming together and the results soon followed.
Nativity met Tamaqua again for a non-league, regular-season game Sept. 14. The Hilltoppers won 6-3 and didn’t lose again until their regular-season finale at Pen Argyl.
Ricardo Chagolla emerged as one of the Schuylkill League’s most potent scorers during that stretch, with 23 goals heading into tonight’s contest.
Alfredo Diaz is second on the team with 15 goals, while Cristian Vazquez has 11.
Chagolla, a senior captain and one of the players from Shenandoah, provides an invaluable service to Datte as a Spanish speaker that can help translate for exchange students like Diaz.
“I think trying to talk both languages to them brings us together,” Chagolla said. “We have to communicate a lot more, talking to the coach and the players back and forth.”
The exchange students with the biggest impact on this season’s team have been midfielders Diaz, Rodrigo Sanchez and Javier Encalada, big fullback Jorge Nechar and sweeper Pablo Hernandez.
That’s why the last few weeks of the season were so challenging for Nativity after Nechar, Encalada and Hernandez all went down with injuries.
Also lost were central midfielder and senior captain Ayden Adams and goalkeeper Eric Nelson.
Datte expects some to return tonight, but one certainty will be replacement goalkeeper Junior Menjivar between the woodwork.
“I really wanted to be the goalie and I had to take that opportunity,” said Menjivar, who took over after Nelson’s injury vs. Lourdes on Sept. 21. “There were other options, but I wanted to be the new goalie. ... I just like the feeling of helping the team.”
Once Nelson was healthy enough to return to the sidelines, he went to work helping Menjivar with his form.
A former defender, Menjivar is visibly more comfortable in goal now than he was when he first started.
“(Nelson) has been really helping me,” Menjivar said. “I knew what to do, but he knows better than I do. I feel better when he’s there. He’s like my mentor.”
Regardless of tonight’s outcome, the Hilltoppers are destined for the District 11 Class A playoffs starting next week. Whether they will contend for a Schuylkill League title between now and then remains to be seen.
But that’s not all that matters to Datte. The sheer fact that Nativity endured such a wild ride with its late start, missing players, language barrier and barrage of injuries has made it all worth it for the first-year coach.
“Fortunately all that goes out the window,” he said. “These guys are teammates now. They play well together, they like each other, they communicate well with each other, even though sometimes there are some language issues.
“It’s really been a rewarding season for John and for me and the players,” he added. “We had to do a lot in a relatively short period of time. And it seems like, sometimes, we do get a little better with each game.”