Two members of the Columbus St. Charles Preparatory School soccer team that won state championships in 1983 and 1985 said their fiercest challenges came not in any playoff games but against each other.
“Our scrimmages were the most competitive matches we played, the best training sessions you could ever have,” said Angelo Cantenacci, a 1986 graduate of the school. “Getting through those was harder than any of our regular games because of what was at stake.”
“In those days, the school didn’t have its own athletic fields,” Dave Merola, a 1987 graduate, said. “We had to practice at Wolfe Park, across East Broad Street from the school. So, we had to carry all our equipment, including goal nets, across the street and back again.
“We had carpool groups of various sizes. Practices would end with the groups scrimmaging each other, with the loser having to carry the equipment across the street. No one wanted to carry those big, awkward, heavy nets across four lanes of traffic on a heavily traveled street at rush hour, so the competition was terrific.
“As intense as we played each other to avoid carrying the nets, it made the games against other schools easier.”
Cantenacci and Merola are the first two inductees into the new St. Charles Soccer Hall of Fame. They were honored on Friday, Aug. 11 before the Cardinals’ season opener against Pataskala Watkins Memorial.
The hall has been created to honor the 50th anniversary of the St. Charles soccer program, which began with a club team in 1973 and became a varsity sport when soccer came under the jurisdiction of the Ohio High School Athletic Association three years later.
St. Charles’ 1-0 victory against Watkins in the opening game gave the Cardinals a record of 554 wins, 248 losses and 108 ties in that period. (The record is incomplete because one year is missing.)
This includes state championships in 1983 and 1985 – the school’s first in any sport – state runner-up finishes in 1981, 1988, 1991 and 2016; eight regional championships; 12 district championships; 20 Central Catholic League (CCL) titles; and five championships in the former Central Ohio Soccer League (COSL).
St. Charles won the 1983 Ohio Class A-AA championship, completing a 21-0 season, by defeating Cincinnati Finneytown 2-0 at Westerville South on goals by Catenacci and Merola’s deceased brother, Rick. Two years later, the Cardinals (21-2-1) were 3-1 victors over Enon Greenon in the A-AA title game at Cooper Stadium in Columbus, with Dave Merola and Catenacci scoring the first two goals.
Despite the success of the state championship teams, Merola and Catenacci said the Cardinals’ best team in that era was the 1984 squad, which competed in Class AAA in that year and won 22 straight games before being beaten 1-0 by Centerville at Huber Heights Wayne in the state semifinals, ending what remains a state-record 43-game winning streak.
“What I remember most about that game is that it was played in very stormy weather,” Merola said. "It was on a wet, muddy field – not real soccer. Thinking about that game still hurts almost 40 years later.”
Catenacci and Merola were part of a five-season run from 1981 to 1985 in which the Cardinals were state semifinalists every year and had a combined record of 92-8-7.
One of the remarkable things about that period is that the team had four head coaches – John Blume in 1981 and 1982, Ron Wigg in 1983, Jaroslav Valachovic in 1984 and Glenn Morton in 1985.
“We played a variety of styles in those years because each one emphasized a different aspect of the game,” Merola said. “Coach Blume was very defensive-minded, while Wigg placed a much greater emphasis on offense. Valachovic, who was previously the junior varsity coach, and Morton were a little more balanced.”
Wigg also was part of the first two attempts at professional soccer in Columbus. He was the leading scorer of the American Soccer League’s Columbus Magic, who played in 1979-80 and 1980-81 at Cooper Stadium, and was coach of the Columbus Capitals in 1984-85 and 1985-86, their only two years of existence. The Capitals played American Indoor Soccer Association matches in Battelle Hall at the Greater Columbus Convention Center.
“Soccer was just taking off in the late 1970s and early ’80s when the Merola brothers and I started playing with the Columbus Dynamo and East/West youth soccer organizations,” Cataldi said. “Some of us in those groups went on to St. Charles, while others went to Westerville North and South and what was then Worthington High School, creating rivalries which were part of the COSL, in which we won five championships in six years from 1979 to 1984, the year the CCL began league play in soccer.”
Merola and Catenacci were asked separately what made St. Charles soccer successful when they played, and both used the same phrase – “We felt like a family.”
“We all worked for each other. We didn’t play for individual rewards. All we wanted was the state championship,” said Catenacci, who set two state records by scoring three goals in the first 2:17 of a game against Lancaster in 1984 and finishing his high school career with 119 goals, with his final goal coming in the state championship game against Greenon.
Catenacci played college soccer at Ohio State University and coached St. Charles from 1991 to 1994, with his first team losing in the state championship game to Bay Village Bay on penalty kicks.
“We grew up together and shared many experiences,” said Merola, who broke Catenacci’s record in 1986 and finished with 128 goals. “Many of us are still great friends.”
Merola played for the University of North Carolina, where he was a member of a team that reached the NCAA Final Four in 1987. He also represented the United States on several teams that toured Europe and South America. His son, David, later played for North Carolina State.
Merola was an assistant coach on Catenacci’s St. Charles team in 1993 and their friendship later extended into a business venture in which they were franchise holders for Wendy’s restaurants in the Kansas City area of Missouri and Kansas.
Catenacci coached his children in youth soccer in the Kansas City area and today owns a construction company in Overland Park, Kansas and is coaching director for the Sporting Blue Valley Soccer Club, part of the Sporting KC organization in Major League Soccer. Merola is president of a commercial real estate company in Cary, North Carolina.
Before the game against Watkins, the Hall of Fame inductees spoke to the current St. Charles team. Asked afterward what they said, Merola responded with a familiar phrase. “Remember you are a family, from the first game to the last,” he said.
“You share a bond you always will have in common. Now give it all you’ve got – and win.”
