Wolverines soccer program to unveil Wall of Fame Saturday enshrining the all-time greats of its boys and girls teams
By Al Muskewitz
Riverview Sports News
WOODSTOWN – The Woodstown athletics program has a long and storied history, but much of it, it seems, is an oral history. Outside of the trophies in the case and the stories the old-timers tell in the stands, there’s not really anything that recognizes the heroes of their history.
But one of the school’s longest-tenured coaches is setting out to change that, even if it is just in his little corner of the world.
Darren Huck has a nose for these kinds of things. After putting together a comprehensive statistical history of both the boys and girls soccer teams, he set off on a project to recognize the all-time legends of those programs.
The result is a Woodstown Soccer Wall of Fame that will have its public unveiling Saturday before Huck’s Wolverines boys team plays Northern Burlington at the Ron Udy Soccer Complex. No one has seen the sign but Huck and the designers
“Almost every school out there has a Hall of Fame or a Wall of Fame; Woodstown High School does not have one,” said Huck, in his 26th season as the Wolverines’ boys coach. “When I look around at all these schools I go to, I see all these schools that have it and we don’t have anything. That’s no disrespect to people in leadership there now or in the past. For whatever reason there’s nothing there.
“This isn’t to compare Woodstown soccer to Pennsville or Audubon or anything like that. It’s just for us to recognize these are the best players who have played at Woodstown High School and recognize and honor them.
“I don’t know of another high school in South Jersey – and maybe even the state – that has anything like this, their own boys and girls soccer Wall of Fame. For our school, since we don’t have anything like that, this will be a little groundbreaking and something to be super proud about.”
School officials aren’t involved in the project, but they did give their blessing.
The list of players that will appear on the wall is more than just that year’s statistical leaders. All the inductees must meet a rigid criteria for inclusion. Huck put it together through painstaking research, checking and cross-referencing multiple sources, to devise a scorecard for everyone who has played in the program.
Through it all, 134 players have made the cut. The list goes all the way back to 1982 – 17 years before Huck became the head coach.
He had already done a lot of the legwork while researching the complete statistical record for his boys program, a seven-year endeavor that became the all-time records board posted on the wall at the entrance of the soccer complex. And then he started on the girls program.
“In the back of my mind I always had the vision of putting a Wall of Fame together,” he said.
Huck didn’t want to have a committee to select the roster of players. Instead, he put together a scoring sheet with all the possible accomplishments a player could have in their careers. Things like captaincies, letters won, all-star recognition, and, of course, statistical credentials were considered. He plugged every player into the formula and if a player met the threshold they made the wall.
Huck, who is on the verge of becoming Salem County’s second 300-win coaching veteran, is not on the Wall. He was a very good outside back for the Wolverines back in the day, but his biggest claim as a player he says was being a three-year varsity starter on one of the program’s the top five defensive teams of all time.
He showed his grading system to several coaches for validation and without them seeing the players’ statistical component all said he was right on the mark.
“I didn’t want anyone to look at it and judge it as, well, looks like everybody got in or it was too easy,” he said. “I didn’t want it to lose its legitimacy and it didn’t. There are some good players who didn’t make it, but that’s not a bad thing, because it just shows it’s legit. If you’re good, you’re in it.”
The 8-x-4-foot blue metal sign with orange and white lettering was designed by Glassboro’s Astro Sign Company, whose co-owner Nick Painter played for Huck. The roster of honorees wraps around the Woodstown Soccer Wall of Fame crest designed by another former Wolverine, Rylie Gantz, who is on the wall (2021).
The sign cost “a couple thousand dollars” and the program raised the funding for it. All the inductees will receive a special gift commemorating their inclusion on the Wall.
The feedback has been overwhelmingly positive.
Huck spent weeks gathering contact information for all the players who qualified to be on the wall and there were only about a half dozen he was unable to reach. Almost 100 of the 134 from nearly a dozen states have RSVP’d their intention to return. Andrew Blaszczyk (2016) is coming from California on leave from the Navy. Todd Shimp in coming up from Florida with his family to honor his late brother Kevin (1992).
“People are coming up and coming down and coming over from all over; it’s pretty remarkable,” Huck said. “There are a ton of brothers on the wall, sisters on the wall, brothers and sisters, mothers and daughters, fathers and sons, fathers and sons and daughters (among the inductees).”
Players will be added as they reach the criteria or may have been missed in the previous research. No doubt future inductees will include current Woodstown seniors Adrian Ibarra, Ben Stengle and Talia Battavio.
The unveiling and player recognition begins at 9 a.m. and will be broadcast on the new Woodstown soccer YouTube channel.
“It’s a way of almost having a reunion but also honoring the best of the best,” Huck said. “The only thing that could ruin it maybe is rain and I’m telling you right now even the rain I don’t think can dampen the enthusiasm that’s around all this.”
WOODSTOWN SOCCER WALL OF FAME
1982: Brian Udy, Doug Hathaway
1983: David J. Fedora Sr., Mike Bickford
1984: Eric Sigurdson
1985: David “Mugsy” Nathans, Kevin Udy, Magnus Ramquist, Robert Hammond, Steve Demarest, Tom Boger
1987: Jack Reistle
1988: Cherie Hill Lombardo, Jon Gonzalez
1989: Amy K. Hill, Bobbi Andrews Elwell, Scott McCall
1990: Brian Ritchie, Daniel Emmans, Sean Weiser
1991: Becky Gantz Blum, John Burger, Thanh Mai
1992: Dr. Kevin M. Shimp
1993: Lauren Eichmann Morgan, Lauren Weaver, Raechelle Hatchell
1994: Amy Bender McGroarty, Amy Gray, Bill Olbrich, Carrie Ann Flemming, Craig Patterson
1995: Laura Flitcraft Merkle, Lauren Weist, Matt Foote
1997: A.J. Washington, Jeff LaPalomento, Kim Merkle-Souder
1998: Brian Bender, Bruce L. Bobbitt Jr., Laura J. Sanderlin
1999: Paul Hughes
2000: Amanda Clark Rondon, Amy Wasersztein Fredrick, Brian Roberts, Oscar Hernandez
2001: Bleigh Ahl Garcia, Bradford L. English, DR Ayers, Jessica Coles, Randall Clark
2002: Christine Monforto, Lauren Tavani, Lindsay Thompson, Rebecca Callen Iacovone
2003: Dana Ayars Hitchner, David Roman, Rob Polk
2004: Jenny Finocchiaro, Jillian Sigars, Leslie Long, Probyn Allen
2005: Ashley Jones, Julia Godsmark, William Layton
2006: Corie Coles, Craig Bober, Lucia V. Allen, Megan Beal, PJ Tucker, Randy Wickersham, Ta-Monica Moore
2007: Brynn Really Bross, Elena Layton, Emma Geiger, Greg Tavani, Kathryn LaPann, Lindsey Butler
2008: Ethan Kavanagh, Travis Goss
2009: Noelle Kitchin, Tori Malpezzi
2010: Alexander Zeidler, Chelsea Norbuts, Drew Geiger, Michael Love, Rachel Norbuts, TJ Schaefer
2011: Fran Smith, Jacob Allen
2012: Greg Conner, Jon Robbins, Marlyn Malpezzi, Zachary Smick
2013: Bonnell Reynolds, Dillon Martell, Victoria Smick
2014: Alexandra Sottile, Astasia K. Williams-Bertles, Brandon Dean, Clark Hathaway, Eric Hepler, Fallon Secaur, Kelly O’Kane, Lexi Brown, Matthew Simmermon
2015: Alex Norbuts, Cole Kugler, Mickey Demarest, Tom Brady
2016: Andrew Błaszczyk, Dylan Varner, Geoffrey Schaefer, Paige Rodriguez
2017: Brice Monefeldt
2019: Chris Williams
2020: Maddy Hunt, Nathan Hitchner, Sadie Boatright, Shaye Kelly, Trevor Lodge, Zac Moore
2021: Ava Lammersen, Jake Moore, Justin Olbrich, Rylie Gantz
2022: Chase Prater, Dean Sorantino, Will McQueston
2023: Elizabeth Morgan, Ellen Olbrich, Gabrielle Saia, Jordana Fredo, Tatum DeVault
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