If the Farmingdale Rams are going to get over the top and capture the Skyline Conference for men’s soccer in 2014, it will take some more aggressive play. That’s according to team captain and defensive player Vincent Danetti.
“We don’t have a lot of big guys on our team,” Danetti said. “We need to play aggressive.”
The Rams currently sit at 3-2-1 in conference play and remain in the midst of the playoff race. They are currently looking up at Sage, Purchase and Mount St. Mary—the defending champion.
The senior defenseman is not ready to concede the conference to the reigning champs. “I wouldn’t say they are a powerhouse,” he said.
That type of confidence is what allowed Danetti to become captain for the Rams this season. He feels that confidence is one of the aspects of his game that has improved since going to college.
“My game has grown… my skills have gotten better, but I really feel that the confidence is the biggest difference,” he said. “I wouldn’t have noticed it when I got here but now I can see the difference.”
Entering college, Danetti was coming off an All-Conference season at MacArthur High School where he was also an Honor Roll student. He chose to attend Farmingdale because of the proximity to home and the opportunity that playing Division III athletics presents—competition in a looser atmosphere than Division I.
To this point, he said he “absolutely” believes he made the right decision to play for the Rams. The one thing he would change though, is adding a championship banner to the Farmingdale State gym. The school has experienced a period of prosperity in virtually every other sport—including baseball’s ongoing seven consecutive Skyline Conference titles.
To this point, the title has been elusive for the men’s soccer team. The team is coming off a disheartening 2-1 loss to Mount St. Mary’s, who scored the winning goal in the last minutes of the finals, last year.
The previous year—Danetti’s sophomore season—the Rams would lose in penalty kicks to NYU-Poly in the quarterfinals. And in his freshman year, the Rams suffered through a difficult 4-12 season.
As the team improves with each season, the next logical step is to capture the conference title. And this season, the team has as good a chance as any to achieve their goal.
They possess some firepower. Junior J.T. Famularo leads the team with 18 points (seven goals, four assists) and sophomore Samuele Riva has 15 (seven goals, one assist) of his own.
Victor Romero (five goals, five assists) and James Curley (four goals, three assists) have contributed to the offense as well.
So far, the Rams have not been defeated in October. Since falling 7-0 to NYU-Poly on Sept. 30, the team defeated Mount St. Vincent 2-1, tied 0-0 with Maritime, shutout Sarah
Lawrence 6-0 and beat rival Old Westbury 2-1. That stretch was enough to get the team right back in the thick of the playoff race, and erased their 0-4 start.
If there needed to be any more motivation for Danetti, his younger brother, Dom, just won his first conference title for Dowling’s baseball team and came within one victory of reaching the Division II World Series in Carey, N.C.
The Danetti family is no stranger to success on the field—his father also played lacrosse and football in high school.
In the immediate future Danetti will focus on keeping the Rams on a hot streak and pushing the team into the postseason.
