Judging by how the season has begun along with the rankings in the early state polls, it is shaping up to be quite the great year for girls soccer in the FCIAC in terms of the high quality of the best handful of teams in the conference.
Defending state Class LL champion St. Joseph is ranked No. 1 while leading a trio of FCIAC teams ranked in the top three spots and five conference teams are ranked among the top six in the in the current 2024 Connecticut High School Class LL/L Girls Soccer Coaches Poll.
St. Joseph and Staples are ranked 1-2 as they remain where they were ranked in the previous poll, while FCIAC member Fairfield Ludlowe and Mercy are tied for No. 3.
Those top four teams are followed by FCIAC teams Ridgefield at No. 5 and Trumbull at No. 6.
Amity Regional vaulted up to No. 7 after being unranked the previous week. Suffield, Bethel, and Waterford are ranked 8-10.
Coach Jack Nogueira’s St. Joseph’s Cadets, who improved to 5-0-0 with an 8-0 victory at Norwalk on Sept. 14, received 10 of the 12 first-place votes and Staples got the other two first-place votes.
The Cadets have shut out four foes and have outscored their first five opponents by a 21-1 margin.
Staples improved to 6-0-0 with a 4-1 victory at Darien on Sept. 14. That was the first game in which coach Barry Beattie’s Staples Wreckers were scored upon after five shutout victories. The Wreckers have outscored their first six opponents by a 21-1 margin.
Fairfield Ludlowe, tied for the No. 3 ranking with Mercy, improved to 6-0 with a 5-0 home victory over Brien McMahon. Ludlowe’s Falcons moved up one spot from being No. 4 in the previous poll. They also have had a potent offensive attack, given that they’re outscored their six opponents by 21-4 margin.
Suffice it to say, with the quality of those top FCIAC teams, virtually every week of the season there will be at least one showdown involving those top teams.
Such is the case this Thursday (Sept. 19) when No. 3 Fairfield Ludlowe plays at No. 1 St. Joseph (4 p.m.). St. Joseph takes a 45-game unbeaten streak into that game. It will be close to two years to the day in which St. Joseph last lost – with Fairfield Ludlowe being that last team to beat St. Joseph on Sept. 23, 2022.
Fifth-ranked Ridgefield (3-1-1) dropped two spots down from the previous poll. Coach Iain Golding’s Ridgefield Tigers began last week with a 4-1 home loss to top-ranked St. Joseph and ended it with a 1-1 tie against Stamford at home.
Trumbull’s Eagles (4-0-1) maintained the No. 6 ranking they had the previous week.
Nogueira, Beattie, Golding, and Fairfield Warde coach Kim Rasmussen are the four FCIAC coaches among the dozen coaches statewide who are the voters on the state coaches’ poll.
After this coming Thursday’s Fairfield Ludlowe at St. Joseph matchup, there are eight more showdowns involving those five FCIAC teams ranked among the top six in the current state poll being matched up against each other.
Those matchups, in the order in which they are scheduled to be played, are St. Joseph at Trumbull on Sept. 24, Fairfield Ludlowe at Ridgefield on Sept. 26, Staples at Fairfield Ludlowe on Sept. 30, Trumbull at Staples on Oct. 4, Trumbull at Ridgefield on Oct. 7, No. 2 Staples at No. 1 St. Joseph on Oct. 9, Fairfield Ludlowe at Trumbull on Oct. 15, and Ridgefield at Staples on Oct. 17.
Having several of the best teams in the state naturally coincides with the FCIAC having many of the best players of the state.
The conference certainly has three of the top players in the state in St. Joseph’s senior forward Alexa Pino and Staples forwards Natalie Chudowsky and Annabel Edwards.
It is no embellishment to state that Pino is the state’s best player because that is exactly what was confirmed after her previous sophomore and junior years when she was named the “Player of the Year” by GameTimeCT shortly after the season ended and then she was named Connecticut Gatorade Player of the Year for the second consecutive year.
Pino has helped the Cadets win the last two FCIAC championships and three state championships (Class L in 2022 and ’21) in all her previous three years.
The future South Carolina Gamecock player had 39 goals and 19 assists last year and had 99 goals and 47 assists for her career going into this season. Pino has made the All-FCIAC Girls Soccer First Team all three years since her freshman year.
Chudowsky, a junior who collected 18 goals and 17 assists last year, was the only sophomore named to the 12-player 2023 GameTimeCT All-State Girls Soccer First Team. Chudowsky was selected to the 2022 All-FCIAC Second Team as a freshman and last year she improved on that when she made the All-FCIAC First Team.
Chudowsky has a great partner up front in Edwards, a senior who made the All-FCIAC First Team during both her sophomore and junior years and the GameTimeCT All-State Second Team last year.
And there are plenty more returning players who have already had very good years in previous seasons.
Pino partners up with a pair of fellow excellent strikers in senior forward Sara Parker and junior forward Julia Nunes. Parker made the 2021 All-FCIAC Second Team as a freshman and was selected to the All-FCIAC First Team the next two years. Nunes was on last year’s All-FCIAC Second Team.
Ridgefield senior midfielder Zoe Desmarais made the All-FCIAC First Team last year after having made the All-FCIAC Second Team as a sophomore.
Fairfield Warde senior midfielder Paige Shaughnessy is a major addition this year as she made the 2021 All-FCIAC First Team as a sophomore and is back this year after she missed all last year with a knee injury.
Two more solid returnees include New Canaan junior midfielder Paige Place (All-FCIAC First Team last year) and Wilton senior goalkeeper Addison Von Loeser (GameTimeCT All-State Honorable Mention last year).