Senior keeper stays busy with three sports
by John Beisser, Sports Writer
In the fall, Manville High senior Matt Zangara spends his afternoons between the soccer posts at goalkeeper. In the fall he trades in his cleats for sneakers as a guard on the basketball team. The spring means track and field, where he competes in the sprints and 4×400 relay.
He calls soccer his favorite sport, track and field his best sport and his favorite athlete of all time is:
”Chipper Jones of the Atlanta Braves,” Zangara said with a laugh.
Chipper Jones?
”Yep, my favorite athlete plays a sport that I don’t even play,” he added. “I have an aunt who has lived in Atlanta for about 10 years and ever since she moved there I started following the Braves and Chipper Jones became my favorite player.
”Soccer is my favorite because I have played it the longest, something like 11 years,” said the 6-1, 160-pound Zangara. “I’d say I’m best at track, specifically the 4×400 relay because we made the states last year in that event.”
The Manville High boys’ soccer team, despite its 1-9 record, is easily the best of the three varsity soccer teams he has played on. Manville is scoring goals at a much higher rate than in any recent season and has hung tough with a host of talented teams. Manville had a tough two-game stretch, however, last week in dropping games to Somerville and (5-0) and North Plainfield (5-1).
Manville has had a penchant of starting out slowly in games of late and head coach Tim Moore is at a loss to explain why.
”We’re just not playing well early in games,” Moore said. “We seem to play good second halves but in both games last week we fell way behind early. For some reason, we have a habit of late to really struggle in the first 30 minutes.”
More representative of Manville’s overall play this season was a recent battle with Bernards that went to the wire before the Mustangs dropped a 3-2 decision.
”We’re definitely better in all areas,” Moore said. “We’re scoring at like a goal per game where last year we scored maybe 10 goals the whole season. Bernards had three straight shutouts before they played us and they had only allowed three goals all season. But we scored two goals on them.”
Moore was effusive in his praise of Zangara’s leadership abilities and overall play.
”Matt’s a great communicator back there. He is constantly talking with his defenders and positioning them,” Moore said. “This season, he’s been doing a better job of getting on the ground, diving for balls, He used to rely mostly on kick saves but now he’s going out and getting more balls.”
Zangara is interested in pursuing a career in the sports medicine or sports training field and is considering attending Kean University and Montclair State University, among others.
”I’ve given it a lot of thought. I love being around sports and want to have a career somewhere in sports,” he said. “I was thinking about physical education but lately I’ve been giving a lot of thought to something like athletic training or sports medicine.”

