Blast from the Past, 1965

The 1965 LM Aces boy’s soccer team could very well be the most dominant team in Aces soccer history. Coming off back-to-back league titles in ’63 & ‘64, the 1965 team was returning many key players from a ’64 team who outscored their opponents 60-6 (an exceptional season in their own right), including their high scorer Steve Davidson.

Davidson, whose 31 goals in a season and 64 career goals still stand as school records for boy’s soccer, captained this explosive team. They also had many other scoring threats in Mark Rash (22 goals), Bill Trimpi, Bill Furber, David Kobinsky, Mike Ross, & Jay Pillard. The ’65 Aces also boasted the best starting midfield line in the district in Jack Pennypacker, Paul Ferst, and Ken Becker. Defensive backs Steve Aichelle and Grover Thompson, along with Jay Littlewood, Steve Mygatt, and standout goalkeeper Toby Pyle, helped record 13 shutouts in 18 games.

After winning the tough Suburban 1 league, and finishing the regular season unblemished with a perfect 14-0 record, the ’65 LM team dominated the first 2 rounds of the District 1 playoffs, pummeling Woodrow Wilson 5-0 in the quarter-finals, and destroying Central Bucks 6-0 in the semi-finals. In the Championship game they took on powerful West Chester, and after regulation & overtime, with the score still tied 1-1, the Aces were awarded the victory, based on a substantial corner kick edge (there was no penalty kick shootout in those days). This victory gave them an invite to the Inter-District game against District 3’s Garden Spot. Playing on a sloppy field at West Chester University, Garden Spot capitalized on a defensive mistake late in the game, and won 1-0, spoiling the ’65 Aces perfect season.

The final stats are mind-blowing, starting with an 8-0 league record and a 17-1 overall record. The offense scored an unbelievable 66 goals in their first 12 games (finishing with 97 for the season), while the defense, in those same first 12 games, recorded 10 shutouts finishing with 13 in all). The closest any other LM team has come to matching their goal total was in 1992, when that team scored 78 goals, and they even played 2 more games. The ’65 Aces also placed a record 7 players on the All-League team; Davidson, Ferst, Trimpi, Rash, Pennypacker, Becker, and Pyle. Davidson & Becker were also picked as All-Scholastic selections.