Following another successful season for boys’ varsity soccer, the team looks back on their 2018 season. After falling short of the state championship last year, the team brought home its third state title in five years after defeating Nipmuc. Although the team finished with a state championship, it wasn’t an easy path to get there.

“Bedford was a tough team throughout the [season],”  senior captain Gage Fuller said. “We tied and lost to them during the regular season, and we had to play them in the second round of the playoffs, so that was a brick wall to go through. We were very prepared for that game, [and] we knew we had to go hard in order to win. We ended up winning on penalties, so it wasn’t a super decisive win.”

The team credits the comeback to its mental toughness for the playoff run.

“This is the first Wayland team to win a state championship that didn’t have a bye in the first round,” Fuller said. “We went to penalties twice in the playoffs, we went into overtime four times out of the six games, and to come out on the winning side of all six of those games says something really powerful about the grit and determination we had throughout the season and our desire to win.”

Head coach David Gavron led his team to all three of their recent state titles. His hands-off coaching tactic reflects the boys’ leadership ability, which he attributes to their success.

“So as long as we’re providing [them] with the information that they need about our opponents, making sure that [its] training is appropriate, letting [it] know that we, as a coaching staff, will do everything to try to help them be successful, that’s all we can do to contribute to the team’s success,” Gavron said.

Although the team has a history of winning, team members don’t take it for granted. According to Fuller, the team’s ability didn’t become clear to him until he was already well into the season.

“I didn’t know we had the potential to make it to the state final,” Fuller said. “But, I think that after we beat [Concord-Carlisle], I started to realize the potential of this team, and everything came together at that point.”

With the team’s history, its natural that the standards are high for members of the team, not only from their coaches but from their teammates as well. According to Gavron, teammates hold each other accountable, so the attitude of the team isn’t a concern.

“[The coaches] don’t have to worry too much about attitudes because the players do a lot of the policing of how people act,” Gavron said. “There’s an expectation [that the] team comes first, and the seniors do a wonderful job of making sure that the freshmen that are coming into the program all the way up to the seniors that are joining varsity for the first time understand that the team comes first.”

According to Gavron, he’s optimistic that the team remains competitive year to year, and this year it lived up to his hopes.

“[Winning] was really a sense of relief for the boys because they’ve worked so hard to ultimately be the best team in the state in Division 3,” Gavron said.