NTL BOYS' SOCCER: NEB GLAD TO BE BACK IN THE POSTSEASON AS THEY EYE A PLAYOFF RUN (2025-10-21)

BY CHRIS MANNING
Northern Tier Sports Report
It’s been a few years since NEB boys’ soccer has been in the playoffs, but the Panthers are excited to be back.

“We’ve been on the bubble, or shot ourselves in the foot a couple of times a few of these years, and had some fuzzy math and handshake sorcery keep us away, and then we kept ourselves away for a year or two,” said NEB coach Scott Merritt. “It’s a very talented team. This is where we should be, even a slightly higher seed than we are with a couple games that didn’t go our way.”

They face the team that eliminated in their last playoff appearance, Southern Columbia, down in Danville on Saturday at 4 p.m.

The Tigers beat them 9-1 in the semifinals back in 2021, but both are different teams since then. They have similar results against common opponents - both teams beat Towanda, NEB twice, and both have wins over Sullivan County.

“My head has taken it like it’s the exact same team, and my assistant played in that game, so he really wants that one back mentally,” Merritt said. “They’ll be a strong team, they have a lot of numbers - they always do - and the goal will be everyone is the best that we’re playing until we beat them. Mentally, nobody’s bad, everybody’s great, so go handle our business.”

It’ll be a 10 day wait from their final game, a win over Troy as the Panthers went 7-1 in their final eight games.

“We’ll continual with touches and ball control is our biggest key, when we struggle in games it’s when we touch, touch, run it out of bounds, or touch, touch, and they steal it,” Merritt said. “So just making sure we control the ball and then try to dial in a few more shots per practice as this week goes on just to keep everyone focused.”

They’ve played less than half their games on turf this season, but have done well when they’ve been on turf, including a 2-1 win over Wellsboro.

“It hasn’t been a wild deterrent like it normally is,” Merritt said. “A lot of times I see our teams go on to turn, and then for 20 minutes we overshoot everything and under run everything because we expect a certain ball speed. But the games on turf that we’ve had this year hasn’t shown up, so I’m looking to do a little partnership, if I get some approval from our school to go co-practice with another team here on turf.”

He believes turf will enhance their speed, especially on the back line.

“It’s not like we need our grass to be four inches tall so that we can play well,” said Merritt. “We exude speed in almost every level, so our slower people that start aren’t slow on any other team. I think it’s just as much as advantage to us, that’s why I don’t think we saw much of a different when we went Wellsboro.”

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