The North Royalton Boys Varsity Soccer began the 2017 season looking at a big task ahead of it. Their job, keep the tradition of North Royalton Boys Soccer alive.
Through the first six games of the season, North Royalton is undefeated on the season with a record of 4-0-2.
Last year, North Royalton had a record of 12-4-3 and reached the Parma District Finals before losing to eventual state champion St. Ignatius 1-0. From the 2016 team, North Royalton graduated 14 seniors.
Boys Varsity Soccer Coach Jason Rutkowski says that loss to St. Ignatius still stings just a bit. “Even though we lost, we learned a lot. We played with the arguably best team in the country, the best team in the state to a 60-minute draw. If a couple of things go differently, we may not give up that goal. The experience will help our young players this year.”
Through the early part of the 2017 season, the Varsity Bears have had players step up to keep North Royalton as a force to be reckoned with on the pitch.
“The question has been rebuilding from last year’s team,” says Rutkowski. “We have a good sophomore class that is going to see lots of playing time.”
Sophomores Hayden Haffner, Zac Peterjohn and Noah Argana have found their way into the Bears’ Starting lineup. “That has not been the case over the last couple of years having sophomores in the starting lineup. Add Christopher Garcia, Kyle Evanko and Nick Mark to the sophomore class.
Juniors on the Royalton Varsity team are Luke Sawyer, John Daiker, Adam Compan, Zachery Simonitis and A J Lozinak.
The heart and soul of the Bears is their senior goalkeeper Ryan Newman. “Ryan is a fourth year varsity player and a three-year starter. He’s the backbone of our team. He’s the anchor. There’s a good defensive line in front of him, so we will be a very good team defensively,” said Rutkowski. “Ryan is one of the top goalies in our area and one of the best in the state.”
Other seniors expected to contribute this year are Jimmy Giles, Christian Emling, Matthew Johnson, Ryan Benefiel, Michael Ribovich, Ryan Gallagher, Anthony Miduri, James Ptak and Joseph Krzwicki.
Coach Rutkowski says, “we’ll have to win games a different way this year. Gone is Evan Neczypor who used to give us two goals a game, (graduated). We’ll have to grind it out this year. Instead of a 4-2 win it may have to be 1-0 victory.”
For fans of the soccer Bears, expect the team to concentrate more on the ’little’ things of the game. “We need to be sharp defensively on re-starts, sharp defensively on the run of plays and sharp on corners. Offensively, on our set pieces we have to be as efficient as we can be to score goals. Those are some of the small areas of the game that we took for granted in the past, but they are much more important this year,” said Rutkowski.
Looking at the Suburban League this year, Coach Rutkowski calls it “a grind every week. We’ll be in there along with Wadsworth, Hudson, Stow, Twinsburg and Brecksville.”
The future of the North Royalton Boys Soccer team is in good hands this year with the 2017 Bears.

By JOE JASTRZEMSKI
Contributing Writer