By Paul Vozzella
Hometown Weekly Sports Reporter
The Warriors picked up right where they left off last season. The 2024 Division III State Champions defeated Medway 17-3 on Friday night to start their season with a win.
Both head coach John Isaf and senior captain Ben Lusby were adamant, however, that Medfield is neither defending anything or trying to repeat something from its previous season.
“There's a new season, a new team [and] new goals,” said Isaf. “Everything that we're focused on is what's in front of us, not what's behind us… We don't really focus on what happened last year, or what's gonna happen three months from now. It's to play to the standard today, get better today and then we'll focus on tomorrow.”
“We don't like to say we're defending a state championship, or repeating,” reiterated Lusby. “We're playing for this year and this is a whole new team, whole new squad, whole new group of guys.”
Well, 2025’s group of players, including 20 returning from last year, produced the same type of championship-caliber results. The Warriors were in charge for a full 48 minutes. While it took a little bit of time for the offense to get on the scoreboard, Medfield’s defense, led by Lusby, senior Tyler Zilinski and senior Charlie Curmi, suffocated Medway from beginning to finish.
Eventually, junior Braeden Sutton would get the ball past the goalie and he was far from finished. After notching his first score with 3:15 left in the quarter, Sutton would score two more times before the clock hit zero. He finished with six goals in the game.
“He's a stud,” praised Lusby. “That kid's a star. I mean, he can do pretty much anything you ask him to do, whether it's shooting, passing, anything really… He leaves a bunch of people speechless with some of the moves he makes.”
Halfway through the second quarter, senior Jack Commane looped around the back of the goal to the front left side and fought through multiple defenders to score his second goal of the game, giving the Warriors a 7-0 lead.
About a minute later, Medfield let up its first goal. Despite only allowing two more scores the entire game, Lusby noticed room for improvement.
“That [was] three goals too many,” said the captain. “That wasn't our best game, but we'll have that dialed up by the next game… We [have to] stop taking penalties. I was guilty of it today. We'll just clean up our penalties and we'll keep moving forward.”
The offensive output was rounded out by three goals from freshman Eddie Breslin and senior Ian Reddy, and one goal each by junior Brady McCormack, junior Jackson Dodge, freshman Maverick McPherson and sophomore Brian Mullis.
Coach Isaf expressed some room for improvement in cleaning up rotations and communicating on the offensive end of the field. Even with the team acknowledging its shortcomings, a 14-goal victory is not the worst way to begin a new season.
