Shore Conference Unveils New Soccer Conference Tournament Format

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The Boys and Girls Soccer Shore Conference Tournaments are getting a new look this season and it will be a familiar one to soccer diehards.

Starting in the 2023 season, the Shore Conference will become the first league in New Jersey to conduct a league-wide, World-Cup-style, group-play stage to determine the field in the conference tournament, followed by the traditional, single-elimination tournament to determine the conference champion.

The proposal has been approved by the Shore Conference Executive Committee and is in the process of being sent to the athletic directors of the Shore Conference, according to Freehold Boro athletic director and Shore Conference Tournament director Josh Mehl.

Here is a breakdown of the new-look, World-Cup-style Shore Conference Tournament.

Group Play

The 45 boys programs and 44 girls programs were broken into 11 groups, with teams placed in their respective groups based on total power points accumulated over the past three seasons (2020 through 2022, not including NJSIAA Tournament play). The top 11 teams were placed in different groups, as were the next 11, with the No. 12 seed grouped with No. 11 all the way through the No. 22 and 23 teams being paired with the No. 1 team.

Exceptions were made to avoid Shore Conference division opponents from being placed in the same group.

While the girls side has an even four teams in the 11 groups, the boys side has one five-team group.

Below are the 11 groups for both the boys and girls.

Boys Shore Conference Tournament Groups

Group 1	Group 2	Group 3	Group 4	Group 5	Group 6
CBA	Holmdel	Freehold Twp.	Marlboro	Wall	Rumson-Fair Haven
Neptune	Howell	Manasquan	Toms River East	Manalapan	Ocean
Pinelands	Manchester	St. Rose	Freehold Boro	Brick Memorial	Middletown South
Jackson Liberty	Central	Raritan	Barnegat	St. John Vianney	Lakewood
					Keyport
Group 7	Group 8	Group 9	Group 10	Group 11
Long Branch	Colts Neck	Toms River South	Toms River North	Southern
Jackson Memorial	Lacey	Monmouth	Middletown North	Point Boro
Ranney	Shore	Matawan	Point Beach	Red Bank
Brick	Red Bank Catholic	Henry Hudson	Donovan Catholic	Asbury Park

Girls Shore Conference Tournament Groups

Group 1	Group 2	Group 3	Group 4	Group 5	Group 6
Freehold Twp.	Toms River North	Jackson Memorial	Middletown South	Red Bank Catholic	Manalapan
Shore	St. Rose	Colts Neck	Toms River South	Brick Memorial	Toms River East
Brick	Marlboro	Donovan Catholic	Point Beach	Middletown North	Ocean
Barnegat	Pinelands	Monmouth	Freehold Boro	Manchester	Raritan
Group 7	Group 8	Group 9	Group 10	Group 11
St. John Vianney	Wall	Rumson-Fair Haven	Point Boro	Lacey
Central	Howell	Trinity Hall	Holmdel	Red Bank
Manasquan	Jackson Liberty	Southern	Matawan	Neptune
Ranney	Long Branch	Lakewood	Keyport	Asbury Park

Teams can schedule group-play games any time between the start of the season on Sept. 7 until the Shore Conference Tournament seeding meeting on Oct. 6. The top two teams from each of the 11 groups will advance to the first round of the actual Shore Conference Tournament, with the possibility of additional “wild card” teams being added to the field in case of extenuating circumstances.

In order to advance out of group play, a team will have to finish first or second in points within its own group. A win is worth three points, a draw is worth one and a loss is worth zero. In the event of a tie between two teams, the tiebreaker criteria will be as follows:

Tiebreaker criteria apply to group games only

1. Head-to-head results

2. Goal differential

3. Goals scored (capped at 6 per game for counting purposes)

4. Disciplinary/fair play points (minus-1 for a yellow card; minus-3 for a double-yellow card; minus-5 for a straight red card)

Tournament Play

Once the 22-team field is set, the Shore Conference Tournament will be seeded in a fashion similar to past years, with one caveat: the seeding committee with seed the 11 group winners and 11 runners-up separately, with the top 10 seeds receiving a bye into the round of 16 and the No. 11 from each pool of teams playing in the first round.

The teams will be paired as follows:

First Round

No. 11 Runner-Up at No. 11 Group Winner

No. 10 Runner-Up at No. 1 Runner-Up

No. 9 Runner-Up at No. 2 Runner-Up

No. 8 Runner-Up at No. 3 Runner-Up

No. 7 Runner-Up at No. 4 Runner-Up

No. 6 Runner-Up at No. 5 Runner-Up

Round of 16

No. 9 Group Winner at No. 8 Group Winner

No. 10 Group Winner at No. 7 Group Winner

No. 11 Runner-Up/No. 11 Group Winner at No. 6 Group Winner

No. 10 Runner-Up/No. 1 Runner-Up at No. 5 Group Winner

No. 9 Runner-Up/No. 2 Runner-Up at No. 4 Group Winner

No. 8 Runner-Up/No. 3 Runner-Up at No. 3 Group Winner

No. 7 Runner-Up/No. 4 Runner-Up at No. 2 Group Winner

No. 6 Runner-Up/No. 5 Runner-Up at No. 1 Group Winner

Coaches’ Cup

The teams that fail to qualify for the Shore Conference Tournament during group play will automatically be entered into the third annual Coaches’ Cup. The consolation tournament will be seeded the same as the SCT, with the top 10 third-place teams earning first-round byes, and will run concurrently with the SCT.

An additional dimension to this year’s Shore Conference Tournament – both the main bracket and the Coaches’ Cup – will be each team will have a ready-made opponent after they are eliminated. Adding opponents between the early rounds of the SCT and the first round of the NJSIAA Tournament has been a challenge for some teams and with each of the Shore Conference’s teams engaged in the tournament, teams that lose in tournament play can then play other losing teams from its side of the bracket, a la a loser’s bracket. According to Mehl, teams are not required to play those games should they prefer to look for different opponents.

Schedule

This year’s Shore Conference Tournament will conclude on a Saturday – the first time the championship has been played on a Saturday since 2016 – and will also finish up earlier in October than has been the norm.

Here is the schedule for the SCT and Coaches’ Cup on both the boys and girls sides.

Boys Shore Conference Tournament

First Round: Monday, Oct. 9

Round of 16: Wednesday, Oct. 11

Quarterfinals: Saturday, Oct. 14

Semifinals: Wednesday, Oct. 18

Championship: Saturday Oct. 21, 4 p.m., at Memorial Field, Neptune

Girls Shore Conference Tournament

First Round: Tuesday, Oct. 10

Round of 16: Thursday, Oct. 12

Quarterfinals: Saturday, Oct. 14

Semifinals: Thursday, Oct. 19