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Throughout Skaneateles High School boy’s soccer team’s undefeated run in 2021, head coach Aaron Moss and assistant coach Pete O’Connor still kept their players in check. If both coaches didn’t think the team performed to par, players would run the next day, junior midfielder David Petercsak said. But if the team did well, Moss and O’Connor would join the players blasting music after each game.

“We knew that we were good, and we knew that we had to play like it,”  Petercsak said. “They controlled the atmosphere … if they felt that we did well, they’d join in on the celebration, and we’d all have a great time.”

Moss announced his retirement after the Lakers’ second straight Class B State Championship win, and O’Connor, who was Moss’ assistant since 2011, took over the head coaching position at Skaneateles. Moss and O’Connor have a shared experience in coming to Skaneateles, both starting as assistants with the Lakers and then becoming the head coach. The two men have led Skaneateles to its recent success and now, O’Connor looks to win a third straight state championship for the Lakers.

Moss graduated from Skaneateles and after a playing career at Canisius College, he moved back to his hometown to put his kids in the same school system he grew up in. Though not originally planned, he began to coach youth soccer, eventually becoming an assistant at Skaneateles. 

Moss was promoted to head coach of the Skaneateles boy’s team in 2005, retiring after a 21-0-0 record in 2021 and back-to-back Class B State Championships. The Lakers accrued a 246-77-22 record in Moss’ tenure, winning three state championships.

 

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Heading into his final year, Moss had thoughts of retirement in the back of his mind, with his son, Tylar, playing on the team and graduating last spring.

“It just seemed like kind of the natural progression,” Moss said. 

O’Connor joined Moss back after coaching the Lakers’ junior varsity team since 2005. Prior to that, he played at Marcellus High School, a Skaneateles rival, and coached at Onondaga Central in the late ’90s and early 2000s. 

Moss said that once he got into coaching at Skaneateles, he didn’t want to leave. Five years after taking the head coaching job, Moss and the Lakers’ won their first-ever state championship, defeating Burke Catholic 1-0 in 2010. Stephen Musso, Skaneateles’ athletic director, said that Moss’ philosophy was more “holistic” in its approach, specifically when it came to attention to detail and relationship building. 

Once O’Connor joined the Lakers’ coaching staff, he said he never felt that he worked “under” Moss. He said that a team’s success is all about the chemistry, not just between them, but between the players, too. Sometimes, Moss wanted to run a certain drill, and the team would do it for about a week. But O’Connor suggested they’d tweak it, putting his own flair on practices.

“And he’s been there for the whole time as well,” Moss said of O’Connor. “So, the consistency in our coaching is, honestly, one of the biggest factors for our success over the years.”

Skaneateles has made the playoffs every year since 2013, but never made the kind of run it made in 2010 until 2019.

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The Lakers won four of their first five games, outscoring opponents 20-5 in that span. They finished 18-5 and won the Class B State Championship with a 2-1 victory over Westhill. In 2020, the team retained the majority of its players from the championship-winning team, but COVID-19 forced the season’s cancellation.

After the hiatus, the Lakers won their second consecutive Class B State Championship in 2021, defeating Cazenovia 2-0 as the No. 1 seed. In its first game of that season, Skaneateles defeated Jordan-Elbridge 10-0 and later defeated O’Connor’s alma mater, Marcellus, in the semifinals. It finished the regular season with a 1-0 victory over Chittenango in one of just two one-score games from that season.

Moss earned Coach of the Year honors for small public schools by the United Soccer Coaches in 2021, eventually handing the torch to O’Connor to carry on the Lakers’ winning “tradition.”

“We’re excited about what (O’Connor’s) gonna be able to do, taking what Aaron started and built, making some subtle changes to make it his own,” Musso said.

Published on September 27, 2022 at 11:22 pm

Contact Preston: ptsickle@syr.edu