The slimmest of margins could separate top boys contenders

If fierce competition is what you seek, look no further than the DODEA-Europe Division I boys soccer tournament Monday through Thursday tournament at Ramstein High School.

Four teams — SHAPE, Stuttgart, Ramstein and Wiesbaden — finished the regular season within a game and a half in the standings, and all four beat up on each other throughout.

Add in a Kaiserslautern squad whose record doesn’t do it justice and Lakenheath and Vilseck teams that can surprise opponents, and the championships could be like a rough-and-tumble, heavyweight bout.

And the players don’t want it any other way.

“If it’s not competitive, I don’t like that,” Wiesbaden’s Jaden Ruiz said. “I like that you have to fight, the whole team has to be in it. You have to be willing to give it everything you have in every game.”

SHAPE enters the tournament as the favorite, going relatively unscathed at 5-0-2 overall and 5-0-1 in league play. The No. 1 seed took care of two-time defending champion Ramstein in the regular season but ended the season with a draw against second-seeded Stuttgart.

The Spartans didn’t blow out a single opponent in the regular season, with their highest margin of victory being four against Kaiserslautern and Vilseck.

Senior Chase Lattemore said nerves will play a factor from the opening whistle of the first match.

“It really puts pressure on us to do well in the group stage so we can get the first seed and play a little less better team, but at the end of the day, everyone’s good,” Lattemore said. “A little frightening, but I think we’ll be good.”

Lattemore and the Spartans also are motivated by ending the program’s two-decadelong championship drought. The last time SHAPE won a European title came in back-to-back seasons in 2003 and 2004, when the team competed in Division II.

The closest the Spartans have come since then was in 2024 when they reached the title match, only for the Royals to upset them 2-1.

Lattemore is one of a handful still left from that team. He described the desperation they feel to avoid falling short again.

“In my mind, when we lost, I felt like, ‘OK, I have two more years to get back to this spot,’” Lattemore said. “Obviously, last year we weren’t able to do that. So, there’s this extra sense of, ‘OK, this is the last year; we need to do it.’

“The whole team knows this is the time to do it.”

Still, they’ll have to get past Ramstein and Kaiserslautern in the group stage to make it to the knockout rounds.

As for what it will take to advance to the semifinals and then the finals, perhaps no team knows better the Royals.

Expect it to be a slugfest, senior Logan Robosky said.

“It’s going to be gritty. It’s going to be hard. It’s going to be a full team effort,” he said.

The American Overseas School of Rome program is used to fighting for titles, playing in the last four championship matches and finishing no worse than third place under nine-year coach Giacomo Castelli.

Despite making that many recent finals, the Falcons have taken home just one trophy in 2023.

This spring, AOSR has a great chance to add to the cabinet as the top seed in the mid-sized school tier.

The tournament will take place on the field at VfB Reichenbach 1921 in Reichenbach-Steegen, Germany, through the semifinals and at Ramstein High School for the title match.

“We were close these past couple of seasons, we won it before and hopefully we can win it this year,” Castelli said.

Not that the Falcons (8-0, 8-0) are getting too far ahead of themselves. Castelli pointed to last year’s No. 1 seed, Marymount, going undefeated into the tournament but failing to get out of the group stage.

So, even though his club already beat the second and third seeds, Marymount and Naples, 5-2 and 4-2, respectively, Castelli said AOSR cannot overlook anybody during the tournament.

“We always start from zero,” Castelli said. “It’s important that we go into European (tournament) with the right mindset.

“It’s important to approach every game like it’s a final and hopefully one step at a time, we can reach our objective.”

Undefeated and the defending champion, Lucas Rudy and the Ansbach Cougars understand they are the favorites to repeat in the small-schools tier.

But they aren’t getting too far ahead of themselves heading into the Division III tournament, held at the sports facility Am Rotherborn in Landstuhl through the semifinals and at Ramstein High School for the final on Thursday morning.

“We don’t want to get it into our heads too much,” Rudy said. “We just need to focus on our game and remember what we practiced.”

A reason to stay grounded: The Cougars (5-1, 5-0) aren’t dominating their opponents.

Ansbach won its last three matches by a combined scoreline of 4-0. One of those wins came against a short-handed AFNORTH squad, the tournament’s second seed, 2-0, while the others were one-goal affairs with Brussels and Hohenfels.

Still, Rudy downplayed their run of form, saying once they hit their stride, the Cougars should be fine.

“Just make sure we focus on the game that we’re playing right now and not the game that’s ahead of us, and I think we’ll be OK,” the senior captain said.