Amateur
The Year of the Snake: Looking Back at 2025
The Year of the Snake was a season of tremendous ups and not so great downs bookended by news of a new coaching hire and the potential departure of the team’s best player.
After a preseason that involved saying goodbye to Jack McGlynn and leading goal scorer Daniel Gazdag via a new cash transfer system, the Union started off strong, had an incredible month of May and went on to win their second Supporters’ Shield but the knockout competition draught continued with a semifinal loss in the U.S. Open Cup and a conference semifinal loss at home to NYCFC in the MLS Cup Playoffs. It was a year of wildly exceeding overly pessimistic preseason expectations but somehow ending up right back where the team has been before: cup-less.
Winning trophies wasn’t a problem for West Chester United, which reached a new level of success in 2025, winning the American Premier Soccer League in their first season and repeating as USLPA champions while capturing division titles in the NPSL and USL2 and the National Amateur Cup. It was the first win for a local team in the competition since Philadelphia Inter in 1973 and clinched a berth into the 2026 U.S. Open Cup.
The college season brought with it plenty of interesting storylines but the struggle for national relevance for the Philly Soccer 6 on both the men’s and women’s sides continued. Delaware’s men’s and women’s team reached new levels of success in their new leagues but came up short when it counted while Villanova women deserve a ton of credit for how they recovered from a brutal road loss at Xavier.
Dickinson men were the class of college soccer in the region again, making it back to the Elite 8 only to fall in a heartbreaking penalty shootout while Penn State Harrisburg women reached new heights with their first NCAA tournament win and a trip to the Sweet 16. West Chester women made another deep run in the Division II Tournament but had their season ended the same way Jefferson’s impressive year was cut short: by Franklin Pierce.
The high school season saw Paul VI girls building on their first state championship with a second state title and first South Jersey Coaches Cup championship won on the same night head coach Karen Anderson’s son Ayden Anderson scored the game-winner in the boys final for Washington Township.
Randy Garber leading Abington to their first Class 4A state title was a story that transcended every level of local soccer in 2025 and CB East girls took out their frustration from districts on CB South in the most lopsided girls state final since 2016. The DeGeorge family’s commitment to Archbishop Wood girls soccer was also capped in 2025 with Wood’s first state title. Head coach Maria Kosmin, who took over for brother Tom DeGeorge after her niece had graduated, led a team that featured daughter Mia Kosmin, a key contributor in the state title run.
Local youth and academy soccer produced another MLS Next Cup winner with the Philadelphia Union U15 team and national championships for Penn FC Youth, Lower Merion SC and Carlisle Youth. Lower Merion’s 007s made veteran head coach Charlie Dodds a state cup winner for the first time en route to their National Presidents Cup trophy.
Other notable local soccer stories – from great to tragic – include Voorhees, N.J. native Riley Tiernan’s incredible rise in LA, the tragic death of Rutgers-Camden goalkeeper Julian Naumenko, Ernst Tanner’s still unresolved nightmare boss fiasco, Ryan Richter leading Union II to another impressive season in his first year as head coach, Cavan Sullivan leading the U.S. in the U-17 World Cup and Matt Freese taking over the starting job for the USMNT.
What were your favorite stories of 2025? Share them in the comments.
