Following the best season of his career at Chatham, Shawn Willis has been awarded Patroon Conference girls’ soccer co-coach of the year alongside Cairo-Durham's Drew McCabe, according to a coaches poll released earlier this month.
In Willis’ eighth year with the Panthers, his team went 17-2-1 for Chatham’s best win total across his tenure, finishing with a 4-2 loss to Mechanicville in the Section 2 Class B championship game, the program’s furthest finish in more than a decade.
Chatham went 9-0-1 in the Patroon Conference, sharing the league title with Greenville for Willis’ second conference pennant in three years.
While Willis appreciates the recognition of his award, he doesn’t think 2024 would’ve had the same result with a different level of team-wide effort.
“I think everyone got better,” he said. “I think obviously I'm becoming a better coach every year. I think my girls are becoming better players, I think they understand the hard work that it requires for the success that they want. I think it just all kind of came together.”
The poll also gave all-conference honors to six different Chatham players. Senior striker Addi Perry, sophomore center-midfielder Marsy Chudy and junior Karina Lezama all earned first-team distinctions.
Perry leaves Chatham having finished her second-straight season with 50+ plus goals (52), adding a team-second 13 assists behind Chudy, a fellow captain who finished with a program-record 26. Chudy was second on the team in goals with 18 in 2024, while Lezama was third with eight, alongside seven assists.
Willis thinks that Chudy’s success as an underclassmen comes from her year-round involvement in the sport, with her also playing for the Albany Alley Cats soccer club.
“Marsy has extreme growth potential as a player,” he said. “She's smart, she plays for an incredible team in the offseason where they saw a lot of success, and that kind of just spilled over to her personality, and that's sort of what she brought to our team.”
Second-team honors were given to junior captain Rylie Barden, sophomore keeper Emily Moschini and senior centerback Oliana DeLuca. The Panthers had 11 shutouts with Moschini in front of the net.
“Without a solid defense and without a solid goalkeeper, there's no way that we could have been as successful this year as we were,” Willis said. “I was a goalkeeper and I was a defender as well. I definitely make sure to make them feel special and honored as often as I can for sure.”
All-conference honors extended to Chatham’s boys’ soccer team too, with head coach Aaron Willis, Shawn’s brother, receiving Patroon Conference coach of the year while two of his players were named all-conference first team and three of his players received second-team honors.
“It’s so special to be able to watch [Aaron’s] success and to have my success with him right next to me,” Shawn said. “It's very nice that we've been able to leave Berlin [High School], which is where we're from and have success there coaching, to come to Chatham and bring the same success to this town.”
Both Willis brothers graduated from Berlin, with Aaron later coaching club soccer at Berlin for over ten years while Shawn was there for two before coming to Chatham.
In building on the girls’ most successful season across his time at the school, Shawn is eager to see how different the team will look without Perry’s scoring output which led to a team total of 93 goals in 2024.
“I think the toughest part about next year is changing the way we play,” he said. “I still think we're going to be successful, I just think we're going to need to be better in different ways. To find different ways of scoring, we might need to be a little more possessive. We're not gonna have the 100 goals that we used to.”
Patroon Conference MVP: Ella Grupe, Greenville.
First team: Addi Perry, Chatham; Marsy Chudy, Chatham; Julia Reinhard, Greenville; Emersyn Grupe, Greenville; Karina Lezama, Chatham; Danielle Deering, Coxsackie-Athens; Caroline Kosich, Greenville; Haylee Spar, Maple Hill; Aria McCabe, Cairo-Durham; Ava Edmond, Catskill; Molly Gardiner, Greenville; Sydney Rogers, Maple Hill; Ella Cogliandro, Maple Hill.
Second team: Rylie Barden, Chatham; Ray Paw, Rensselaer; Adele Heuer, Germantown; Camryn Slater, Coxsackie-Athens; Alessia Salierno, Catskill; Morgan Crawley, Greenville; Oliana DeLuca, Chatham; Nia DeRose, Cairo-Durham; Olivia White, Catskill; Emily Moschini, Chatham; Avery Conrad, Coxsackie-Athens; Amanda Ramos-Rivera, Cairo-Durham; Caitlin Pullen, Hudson.