In all competitive sports there’s four distinctive groups involved: the starting players, the coaches, the fans and the bench. In the case of this year’s Washington Township High School boys’ soccer team, there seemed to be only three groups as the bench effectively served as field players with the impact their energy brought to the game.

Referring to themselves as the Society of Bench Players (SOBP), this year’s bench garnered compliments from the coaching staff as well as players from schools such as Rancocas Valley when their goalkeeper admitted the bench was louder than their entire crowd. Being arguably the rowdiest bench in the state, these players came to each game with planned celebrations and chants that struck fear into their hearts of their opponents.

“Playing without the SOBP would be like playing with eleven men,” said sophomore bench member Mike Mulvihill. This humorous comment actually may have some truth to it as the Minutemen would typically hold the momentum and energy during their games.

“You can have all the skill in the world, but without energy and support on and off the field, you’ll never reach maximum potential,” said senior bench member Lucas Burkhardt.

“The energy from this bench took the team to the next level and really inspired the players on the field to perform, as well as improving the general atmosphere of practices and games,” said junior bench member AJ Dressner.

The undisputed highlight from the bench this year took place during the South Jersey Group Four quarterfinal against Cherokee. The referee of the match was forced to tell the bench to sit down due to the fact that they were so distracting to the Cherokee players as Washington Township held a 1-0 lead with time dwindling away. He claimed that the fact that the bench players were not wearing any pinnies to distinguish the fact they were not on the field was a distraction, and that they must sit down. Rather than being discouraged by this, the entire bench promptly suited up in bright yellow pinnies and proceeded to slam the bench to make a larger distraction than before.

“Through my many years of coaching, I’ve never seen more energy come out of our sideline, it was truly something special.” said coach Snyder when addressing the team after the season.

Another highlight from the bench would be during the regular season against Shawnee when they decided to do a goal celebration where they pretended to catch Lucas Burkhardt like a fish and celebrate the big catch. It would be very difficult to make a case that the bench was not entertaining this season, and the memories that came out of their performance may never be matched by any group of bench players again.