Jon Cantwell has one of those so-called "problems" that any coach would love to have.

His ninth season as coach of the highly successful South Park High School boys' soccer team, Cantwell has too many talented players and not enough roster spots or opportunities for playing time to get all of them what they deserve.

"I like the depth the team has," Cantwell said. "We haven't been this deep in years.

"It's a blessing ... or a curse. We have to make difficult decisions when we put the JV and varsity teams together. It's certainly a great problem to have, and no one's going to sympathize with us. It's a great situation to be in.

"I've been doing this long enough to know injuries are a part of the game, so you need to make sure one player doesn't make or break your season. It's a good position to be in to have depth at all our key positions."

The Eagles have eight players back with starting experience (Cantwell said 13 different players were frequent starters at times last season) from a team that went 17-3 and won the Section 3-AA title. Included in that are six seniors who are returning starters, including three all-section performers.

"I would put the depth of this team on par with the teams we had in 2004, '05 and '06," Cantwell said. "It's not the deepest team we've ever had, but it's deeper than the teams we've had the last three years."

South Park played in three consecutive WPIAL and PIAA championship games from 2004-06, winning two of each title in that time.

"We're going to have a pretty good team this year," said senior co-captain Matt Walbert, a four-year starter and on pace to be a three-time All-WPIAL player. "We have a pretty deep team, you could say."

The Eagles had one of the WPIAL's top scoring teams last season, but Cantwell won't let the team's priorities rest on that end of the field. All but two of its wins last season were via shutout.

"That's what we thrive on is our defense," Walbert said.

"I think we've always learned over years," Cantwell said, "as the cliché says, it holds: The years we have our best defense, we win championships; the years we have prolific scoring and have 100 goals throughout the year aren't the teams that win WPIAL or state championships.

"This team's accepted that and taken on a defensive approach and understood their performance of your half of field is what counts. It's tough with high school kids because the glory isn't there like it is with scoring goals. That's the names you see in the paper. It's not real easy to play good defense, but if you want to continue to be playing into November, you've got to be committed to defending."

Funny, because last season, the Eagles' season ended one day before the beginning of November. After cruising through much of the regular season, South Park was upset in the WPIAL quarterfinals, 1-0, against Hampton.

Although, as Cantwell points out, it wouldn't be fair to characterize that defeat as a "bad loss" because the Talbots would go on to both the WPIAL and PIAA title games, it still was a sobering end to a season that had such great promise. And it will lead to a much greater resolve from South Park this season.

"We do have some motivation after last year's loss," Walbert said.

"The team still has that bitter taste of defeat," Cantwell said. "That's given these guys some fuel and desire and added to their focus."

Cantwell calls Walbert "the engine of our team, he quarterbacks us." He's joined in the midfield by experienced seniors Ryan Luffey and Nick Vecchio. Each has multiple seasons of being named to the all-section team last season.

Seniors Pat Morgret and Matt Papinchak are stalwarts on the back line, and the underclassmen with returning starter experience are fullback Mark Sullivan and forward Mike Pcholinsky.

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