Matt Jeffery is picking up where his former Freehold Township High School teammate, Ryan Clark, left off.
Ex-Patriots standout Clark enjoyed a great career playing on the men’s soccer team at Monmouth University. He was an All-American and All-Conference player, leading the Hawks to back-to-back NCAA appearances, including their historic first tournament victory. He was drafted out of college by the New York Red Bulls of Major League Soccer.
Jeffery, now a senior defenseman for the Hawks, gained preseason All-Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference (MAAC) honors after a sensational junior year in 2013, when he earned MAAC Defensive Player of the Year, All-North Atlantic Region First Team, All-MAAC First Team and All-ECAC Second Team recognition.
Like Clark, he’d like to go out leading the Hawks to the conference playoff championships and an automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament.
As high school teammates when Clark was a senior and Jeffery was a sophomore, they led the Patriots to the Shore Conference Tournament championship. In Jeffery’s senior year, Freehold Township won the NJSIAA Central Jersey Group IV title. The men’s soccer coaches in the MAAC picked the Hawks to repeat as regular season champions.
In the coaches preseason polls, Jeffery and his fellow senior defenseman, Emmanuel Senyah Agyemang (Kumasi, Ghana/KNUST) were selected to the Preseason All-MAAC Team.
“It is great to receive this recognition from fellow coaches within our league,” Monmouth head coach Robert McCourt said in a college press release. “The MAAC is a fantastic conference with some great coaches and nationally successful programs. We really enjoyed our first-year MAAC experience last season.
“We have added an exciting recruiting class to a talented and experienced core group of returnees,” he continued. “Our non-conference schedule, combined with the very difficult MAAC slate, reflects our program’s ambition. We look forward to some very exciting nights on Hesse Field at The Great Lawn.”
Jeffery and Agyemang were a big reason the Hawks were such a difficult team to score on last fall. In MAAC play Monmouth (7-1-2) permitted a paltry average of 0.23 goals against and had nine shutouts.
Overall, the Hawks ranked 23rd in the nation in team goals-against average (0.74) and 27th in shutout percentage (0.45).
The Hawks had an overall 8-6-6 record in 2013 and won the regular season MAAC Championship in their first year. As the top seed, Monmouth fell to Quinnipiac University in the finals of the conference tournament. The teams played to a tie, but Quinnipiac prevailed, 4-3, on penalty kicks.
Among Monmouth’s incoming recruits are Ocean Township’s Chris Seager (goalie) and East Brunswick’s Jay Gudzak.
Over the years, McCourt has done a great job bringing the Shore area’s top talent to West Long Branch. In addition to Jeffery and this year’s incoming freshmen, the other area players on the roster include Marlboro’s Dave Nigro, Long Branch’s Wilson Bonilla, Middletown’s Tim Ballard and Manalapan’s Dan Pizzimenti, a graduate of Christian Brothers Academy.