Logan Cassin is a silver lining kind of guy.
“I believe COVID, in a way, actually helped my collegiate career because not only am I going to get this year back in eligibility, but I was able to get a lot of one-on-one coaching time in the fall that a usual college athlete wouldn’t have because of all the practice time we had,” said Cassin, a 2020 Merrimack Valley High School graduate who just finished his freshman season with the New England College men’s soccer team.
That extra practice helped Cassin earn playing time, and score goals, for NEC this spring. And he’s hardly the only Pilgrim to emerge from the chaos of the last 18 months with a renewed energy and optimism. NEC underwent a coaching change in January 2020, lost the entire fall schedule of games (like most college athletic teams) and played a reduced spring schedule, but the Pilgrims went 3-0 in the spring, beat Keene State for the first time in program history and on Thursday first-year head man Brad Campion and his coaching staff were named the NCAA Division III New England Regional Staff of the Year.
NEC is taking these strides forward with a blend of local talent (like Cassin, his former MV teammates Hunter Edwards and Pedro Godoi, Pembroke Academy products Cam Rivard and Connor Manteau, and more) and international talent (with players from Colombia, Sweden, Dominican Republic). Campion, 27, learned that formula at the University of New Hampshire, where he was an assistant in 2019 for Marc Hubbard, who Campion also played for at Southern New Hampshire University. And why not emulate Hubbard and UNH? The Wildcats were ranked No. 10 in D-I at the end of the 2020 spring season and went to their fourth straight NCAA tournament.
“It was always something that coach Hubbard preached, get the best local talent in here, kids that are undervalued and under-recruited and give them the proper development and proper environment to excel,” Campion said. “You see that in the players at UNH and I’m hoping you’ll the see the same thing with environment here at NEC.”
Campion is already seeing it from the Merrimack Valley contingent. Edwards, a sophomore defender, was the first of the MV trio to go to NEC. He then helped recruit Cassin, who was initially leaning towards Colby-Sawyer, and Godoi, who took a year off before landing in Henniker.
“We kept the Merrimack Valley boys all together and their development this year has been such a great surprise for me, honestly,” Campion said. “They’ve been excellent throughout the spring.”
It was only three games, but Cassin finished the spring tied for the team lead in both goals (two) and points (four). Godoi led the team in assists (two) and Edwards started two of the three games. Pembroke Academy’s Rivard also had two goals in three games, and Manteau finished with an assist in two starts. Coe-Brown’s Connor Fallon is another local product at NEC, and although he missed most of the spring with an ACL injury, he can take comfort knowing the Rivard rehabbed from two knee injuries while at NEC and is back on the field in full form.
Rivard, Manteau and Fallon, plus Pinkerton Academy products Alex Rust and Max Fairbank, all played club soccer for Alliance and Simeon Steward, another former UNH assistant.
“I met Brad after the coaching change and he knew my old club coach, Simeon, and it seemed like they had the same coaching style and Brad seemed like a nice guy, so I wasn’t really nervous at all about the change,” Rivard said.
The local connections don’t stop with MV, PA, Coe-Brown and Alliance. Hillsboro-Deering graduate Panagiotis Galatis, now a graduate student at NEC, also finished with four points this spring after leading the team with 12 points in 2019, when the Pilgrims finished 8-11 under former coach Dave DeCaw, who took over as NEC’s Athletic Director following 17 years as the men’s soccer coach. Senior goalie Robbie Ferguson, who played every minute this spring and had a 1.33 goals against average, is a Hopkinton High graduate. Freshman Garrett Boyle, a Concord High grad, appeared in two games and Hopkinton’s Kevin Smith, Jr., appeared in one. In addition to those 10, there were eight other players from the Granite State on the NEC spring roster.
“There’s a lot of New Hmapshire guys on the team and they give it that home atmosphere,” Rivard said.
Campion said that kind of “home atmosphere” is also good for the players not from New Hampshire, who bring their own unique flavor to Henniker.
“We have a group of kids from Florida that brought great energy to the team,” Godoi said. “Their speed of play versus the speed of play up in New Hampshire is very different. They have a lot more flair down there.”
Campion believes that kind of flair mixed with the local talent can create a powerhouse at NEC.
“I think we can make something special here, that’s the goal,” Campion said. “Part of why I left a top 20 D-I program like UNH to come here is that the beauty of D-III is you can beat any team on any given day, and what’s also exciting to me as a coach is that in short periond of time you can build a program to compete on a national scale.”