FEVER PITCH
Hand-Madison’s Scott Testori, national player of the year, will continue pursuing great soccer goals at UConn
“Coach [Ray] Reid told me it was going to be a huge challenge. He thought I’d be a player who would want to step up to that challenge, and I am. I love a challenge.”
— Scott Testori
Scott Testori was playing as a seventh grader for his club team, in one of those soccer games where the other team dominated but no one had scored. It would take one play to make the difference. “I had told Scott before the game, ‘I have a feeling you’re going to score the goal that wins us the game,’ ” says Greg Cumpstone, who coached Testori then, and has since coached him at Daniel Hand High in Madison. “And sure enough, in the 88th minute …”
Testori took a crossing pass and put it in the back of the net, and his team returned home to Madison with the win over the team from Vermont. From there, Testori’s reputation for scoring when it mattered most began to grow.
“It’s one thing to be a great goal-scorer,” Cumpstone says. “It’s another thing to be a scorer of great goals.”
Testori, 6 feet 2, is a natural striker, “deadly in the box,” his coach says, “predatory in his instincts.” In his four years at Hand, he led the Tigers to three state championships and an undefeated, abbreviated senior year. The stuff of his wildest dreams, and beyond, culminated when he accepted an offer to play for UConn, where he will test his skills in a storied program that draws players from all over the world.
“Coach [Ray] Reid told me it was going to be a huge challenge,” Testori says. “He thought
I’d be a player who would want to step up to that challenge, and I am. I love a challenge.”
Then on Dec. 14, Testori, at home for a day of online classes, got a call from Cumpstone, asking him to come to the school as soon as he could. When he got there, Testori learned he was the United Soccer Coaches choice for national player of the year, the first from Connecticut in boys soccer in the award’s 26-year history.
“I just looked at him, like, really? I was in shock,” Testori says. “It’s starting to settle in after a few days. I didn’t know