By Steve Bigham

The boys’ soccer team at Newtown High School is off to its best start in nearly 10 years. At 7-0, the Nighthawks stand alone atop the South West Conference standings.

And they could very well be 10-0 by next week as the schedule looks to get a little easier. The Nighthawks rolled past Immaculate, 4-0, at Treadwell Park Tuesday as junior forward Mike Troy scored his 17th, 18th and 19th goals of the season – all of them coming in the second half. Ryan Tracy, the team’s second-leading scorer with nine goals, scored the game’s only first half goal.

The biggest win over the past week came October 4 in Redding when Newtown upended Joel Barlow, 1-0. It was the first time Newtown had beaten Barlow in 10 years and the first time coach Brian Neumeyer had tasted victory against the Falcons in six tries.

Andrew Fiscella scored the game’s only goal at the 65th minute of the second half on a nifty pass from freshman Marcus Tracy, who pushed it to the middle with his left foot. Fiscella, the team’s sophomore backup goaltender, “bull rushed” his way in and deflected the ball far post.

“We’ve been wanting to get Andrew in there to play. He’s our backup goaltender. He’s been nursing a quad injury and hasn’t even been practicing that much. It was kind of a last minute thing. We wanted to platoon a group of guys up front to make their sweeper work a little bit,” Neumeyer said.

Of course, the game-winning goal was the culmination of a lot of hard work going on all over the field.

The Barlow win symbolized a sort of changing of the guard at the top of the SWC. The Falcons, defending SWC champs, have been the pride of the league for more than a decade. Newtown is clearly the team to beat this fall, having outscored its opponents 34-2.

“So far, we’ve played really well, but we see these teams in the SWC playoffs and we know they’re going to come back and play hard in a tournament situation,” Neumeyer said. “Although it was a big win, we’ve got to put it into perspective. It was just a regular season game.”

Last Friday, Newtown defeated Notre Dame, 9-0, at home as Troy scored four goals and Ryan Tracy and Sean Wilson each scored two. Turkish exchange student Durucan Baltas also scored a goal in the win.

Ryan Tracy led the assist parade with three, Troy had two and Jake Rouse, Nick Mentasana and Tomar Sedaliu each had one.

The Nighthawks are getting fine play from one end of the field to the next, and it appears to be most improved at the offensive end where guys like Tracy, Troy and Matt McFadden are attacking the opposing goal with relentless precision. Newtown’s midfield – headed by Jake Rouse and Ian Walker – is superior, as is an ever-reliable defense headed by goaltender Matt Pachniuk and backs senior Colin Armstrong, junior Derek Miles and sophomore Brian Flattery.

Troy is averaging more than a hat trick per game this season, although he missed the Joel Barlow game after receiving two questionable yellow cards last week versus Bethel.

“If he continues on that pace, I don’t think we’ll lose a game. But the whole group has been fantastic. Other teams really can’t key up on him or Ryan Tracy. Ryan does a lot of the dirty work. The stuff that you don’t notice as much, winning balls, banging guys and coming back a little defensively,” coach Neumeyer said.

Troy, Rouse and Ryan Keogler each had an assist in the Immaculate win.