With the start of the 2026-27 New Jersey Girl’s soccer season ramping up, Montville Township High School took on Glen Ridge in a friendly scrimmage Wednesday afternoon at Montiville.
Thank you for reading this post, don't forget to subscribe!The Mustangs — a strong Group 2 squad coming off a 12–7 season — rolled past the Ridgers, a formidable team that reached the New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association (NJSIAA) North Jersey, Section 2, Group 1 final, with a commanding 6–1 victory on their home field.
The match up was born at the summer camp job both coaches — Nicholas Sands (Montville) and Tommy Xayyala (Glen Ridge) — worked at this past summer, as they organized the preseason tuneup over time.
The Mustangs set the tone early on in the game with a quick goal in the first half to give them a 1-0 advantage. Montville follow that up with another marker to make it 2-0 with 13:00 left in the half. The Mustangs added another tally 5:00 minutes later to push the score to 3-0 heading into the locker rooms.
Three more unanswered goals gave Montville a commanding 6-0 lead. But the Ridgers found the back of the net with 14:56 remaining in the match to break the Mustangs’ clean sheet.
Sands said he was happy with the way his Mustangs performed today, keeping the contest straightforward.
“We kept the game simple, which was the game plan,” Sands explained. “As the game went on, we started to adapt to it, which is, I said, moving out of our comfort zone, and making changes to, whether it be our style of play as far as pacing — offensively, defensively. But truthfully, they looked really fluid on the field.”
One particular player Sands said he is high on, among many others, is Samantha Trimble, a junior forward transfer from Mountain Lakes High School who scored 14 goals and had five assists last year.
Xayyala — who is taking over the reins for Oscar Viteri, who posted a 382–160–31 record and captured 11 sectional championships and three NJSIAA Group 1 State Titles at Glen Ridge — said he welcomed the challenge of facing a talented higher-level squad.
“As a small group 1 school, I like to be playing higher level teams,” the enthusiastic Xayyala said. “So, they’re punching above the belt, to get them to be more physical. Montville was good way to gauge where my girls really are. Today, we just didn’t have it. Maybe heavy legs playing yesterday against Hanover Park? I played a lot of them.”
As for his own personal test, Xayyala said, “there’s a lot of pressure on me. I’m following up on a legendary coach in Glen Ridge who was there for 26 years; won several titles. I have been with the program (as an assistant) for six years now, so the girls know who I am. It’s not like they’re getting someone new. They’re not getting a new system. They’re just getting new roles. It’s a lot of work, but I’m up for it.”
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