Everett Hosszu-Barrett is used to being in the middle of the action on the soccer field.
He’s done it in club for all of his career and now in high school.
The junior midfielder will be tasked with being a main cog for the Bordentown Regional High School boys soccer team this fall. They open the season Sept. 4 against Northern Burlington.
“Offensively, I think I kind of coordinate the press and tell guys when to go, and I like having that responsibility on me and having the trust of my teammates and coaches,” said Hosszu-Barrett. “It’s a big role, but I think I’m capable of doing it and I’m going to be able to help lead the team to the successful season.”
Hosszu-Barrett has been a significant contributor through his first two years of high school soccer with nine goals and 10 assists combined. Last year, the Scotties went 13-6-1 and were 4-3-1 in the Patriot Division of the Burlington County Scholastic League. Their season ended with a hard fought 3-2 loss to Manasquan in the Central Jersey Group 2 quarterfinals.
“We have a good plan of success to come up,” Hosszu-Barrett said. “We’re going to work on getting the first division title in I want to say six years, and then hopefully make it far enough in state because we haven’t made it out the second round in eight years now. So I think with the team that we have, the coaching and the staff that we have amongst us at Bordentown, I think that we can 100 percent make a good run.”
The Scotties have a new head coach but it’s a familiar face in Mike Brennan. Brennan takes over for Jason Zablow, who is now the school’s new athletic director.
Zablow played for Brennan during his first tenure with the Bordentown boys soccer team that lasted from 2005 to 2016 and has maintained contact with the program while raising his children. With his children now in high school, Brennan could return to a more demanding role. He’ll take over a team that lost some strong players to graduation, but has a great freshman class incoming to augment a solid returning core that is hungry to win.
“The great thing about high school sports is even though you’re losing athletes to graduation, you don’t lose everything that they’ve brought to the team because they add to this culture,” Brennan said. “And that’s one thing Jason did a really, really good job is nurturing this culture.”
Brennan has remained around the program in a volunteer assistant role and he knows the sort of makeup of the team. He sees a lot of potential to be a higher scoring team than he used to have.
“It’s a little different than a lot of my teams in the past,” he said. “My teams in the past, they liked to win games by being really organized in the back and would they would focus on defense and try to win games, 1-0. And with the personnel I have right now, what I’ve seen this summer, is they’re very dynamic and we hope to be able to score from many different spots on the field.”
Hosszu-Barrett is an important part of that mix. He’s been a major contributor in his first two years, but now has maturity and experience on his side to step into more all-encompassing role and follow those that graduated.
“We had a bunch of good leaders last year,” Hosszu-Barrett said. “We’ve had Austin (Thiel) and Joey (Klama). They’re great captains, great teammates, and great to play with. They made a fun experience and they made sure everybody was doing what they were capable of and not letting anybody slack off. So I’m hoping to follow in their footsteps and make it a great season, lead us somewhere good — to greatness. It’s destiny.”
Hosszu-Barrett feels ingrained enough in Bordentown’s team to call it a family. They helped him manage as an undersized player when he debuted as a freshman. He’d been playing club, but had to adjust to the faster pace and more aggressive style of the older players. Now that he’s established himself as a strong player, opposing teams will be paying even more attention to him this year.
“You’ve got to move the ball quick and rely and trust your teammates,” he said. “That’s a big part. If you don’t trust your teammates, your guys will never even be successful. You’ve got to have trust in them. That way we have good chemistry. Bad chemistry off the field will not lead to a successful season.”
Hosszu-Barrett has been learning little nuggets to help his game throughout his career. Soccer is his main passion, but he mixes in some fun by playing recreation basketball, fishing or working out at the gym. He comes from a soccer family with his father PJ being a respected club coach for years and former coach at Notre Dame High School. He’s been training Hosszu-Barrett since he was 6, mixing in both physical skills and intangibles to help him develop.
“He told me how to strike the ball really well, and that if you’re going to be on the team, you got to like each other and show respect for each other because no one person is better than everybody else,” Hosszu-Barrett said. “We’re all equal as family, as one team. Everybody should be treated with equal respect and have equal responsibility for our family.”
Hosszu-Barrett has a strong understanding of the game from his father and is motivated to continue working hard to excel. He’s trying to be a better leader this year as an upperclassman. He was a bit more demanding than he’d been in summer workouts and tried to raise the level of play by putting consequences on losing.
“I know that some of the guys didn’t like it, but I made sure that we were all pushing each other to get better,” Hosszu-Barrett said. He’s also tried to create connections by being open to messaging from anyone on the team.
His leadership comes from a combination of perspectives from his numerous teams after playing for a few different clubs through the years. He got his start with a Bordentown town team, but then moved to Players Development Academy with several of his teammates until he moved to Match Fit Surf recently. This summer Match Fit advanced to the Elite 8 of the Elite Club National League championships and are ranked in the Top 20 of all U16 teams in the country. That level of competition has raised his coachability and skill set so he can play a lot of different styles.
“He has the technical ability, the composure, the maturity,” Brennan said. “He has the ability to dictate when we go fast, when we go slow, when we press, when we sit back. I’m looking to give him a lot of responsibility on the field to dictate the way that we play. He can pin his ears back and just be the one that attacks himself, or he can facilitate. If we need someone to do a lot of the dirty work and win balls in the air or make tough tackles, he can be the guy. He can be pretty on the ball, dribble through, slip people in, basically whatever the case dictates. He can be either the piano mover or the piano player.”
The Scotties should be able to offer plenty of support with a strong senior group that has been improving through the summer and is ready to step into bigger roles. They’ll be critical to help bring along a new freshman class that is the strongest Brennan has seen coming into the program. Bordentown will need all hands on deck to contribute in the ever competitive BCSL.
“When these teams that we play against are good, they’re really hard to beat,” Brennan said. “And when they’re down, they’re really hard to beat. I don’t think that you it’s a good idea to look past anyone in our league.”
