Home sweet home! The Ocean City Nor’easters return to Carey Stadium (“The Beach House”) on Friday night to take on Real Central New Jersey at America’s Greatest Family Resort. This is the first of four straight home games for Ocean City to close out the 2023 USL League Two regular season.

All home games kick off at 7 p.m. 

Single-game tickets can be purchased for $10 each (general admission). The easiest way to purchase tickets is to buy them online through the Nor'easters website (OceanCityFC.com). Tickets can also be purchased at the Carey Stadium gate either with cash or with a smartphone.

Any youth, high school or college soccer coach is entitled to a free season membership for all home games at Carey Stadium. Coaches interested in season tickets just have to register and fill out a short survey by clicking HERE. Also, youth soccer players from SJEB FC, New Jersey Surf and Cohansey Premier can get in free by wearing their club's shirt to Carey Stadium.

For fans unable to make it out to the Beach House, the Nor'easters are partnering with BFA Productions to provide a live video stream through the digital streaming platform Eleven Sports, Local broadcast veteran Mike Frankel will be handling the play-by-play duties. Fans can follow the action live at Eleven Sports here. There will also be live updates provided on the Nor'easters' Twitter account (@OCNoreasters).

The Nor’easters enter Friday’s matchup undefeated with a 6-0-4 record. They sit in first place in the Mid-Atlantic Division, four points clear of second place West Chester United. Ocean City is riding a club record 25-game regular season unbeaten streak (18-0-7) dating back to 2021. The team’s last loss came on July 9, 2021 against West Chester United. That WCU game was also the last time the Storm lost a home game. Their home unbeaten streak at the Beach House is currently at 10 games.

On Tuesday, they needed a furious second half comeback to keep that unbeaten streak alive. The Nor’easters fell behind 2-0 on the road against West Chester United, but second half goals by Joao de Oliveira (Bethel College / Santa Catarina, Brazil) in the 75th minute, and Sander Roed (Louisville / Tranby, Norway) in the 82nd minute saved a point. The 2-2 draw was the final road game of the regular season, which means the Storm have gone three full seasons without a loss on the road, a span of 21 games (14-0-7). The last road loss came on June 15, 2019 at Reading United.

Sander Roed’s equalizer against WCU on Tuesday was his team-leading sixth goal of the season. Last year’s team MVP Alessandro Arlotti (Harvard / San Remo, Italy) dished out the assist on that game-tying goal, which is his team-leading sixth of the campaign.

The starter in goal for all but one game this season has been Stefano Camerlengo (Missouri-KC / Pescara, Italy). Tuesday was the first time all season that he had allowed multiple goals in a game. He enters Friday’s contest with a 5-0-4 record with a 0.67 goals against average and three clean sheets.

This will be the third and final matchup of the season against Real Central New Jersey. The first two games were both played at Rider University, and both were extremely competitive. In the season opener on May 20, Sander Roed scored the lone goal and last year’s USL-2 Golden Glove winner Felix Schafer (Santa Clara / Berlin, Germany) earned the shutout in a 1-0 win. (Schafer is currently on tour of the United Kingdom with his college team Santa Clara and plans to return to Ocean City when it’s completed)

In the second meeting on June 14, no one could find a goal as Camerlengo and the defense held RCNJ to a scoreless draw. This marked just the 16th time in the club’s 26-year history that Ocean City has had a scoreless draw in league play.

Ocean City has yet to lose to RCNJ in the club’s first three seasons in the league. They lead the all-time series 5-0-2, but the games have been tight. Four of the last five meetings have been either 1-0 wins by Ocean City (twice) or a draw (twice). The lone exception was June 19, 2022 when the Storm beat RCNJ 5-2 to earn the club’s 100th all-time win at Carey Stadium. To date, no team in the history of the league has more wins at a single venue than the Nor’easters. (Entering Friday, Ocean City is 104-47-29 all-time at the Beach House)

Real Central New Jersey enter Friday’s match with a four-game winless streak (0-2-2), but don’t let that fool you. All of those games could have been different with a lucky bounce of the ball. On June 10, they drew 3-3 at Reading United, followed by the scoreless draw against Ocean City at home. In a rematch at Reading, they fell 1-0 on June 21.

Last Saturday, they played one of the more exciting games of the season on the road against West Chester United. After WCU jumped out to a 1-0 lead, RCNJ scored two goals (Hale Lombard, Daniel Ittycherie) in three minutes to go  in front. Then, WCU answered back with goals from Jack Jasinski and Harrison Coron in a three-minute space (17th & 19th mins.) to retake the lead. Then Lombard scored his second goal to tie the game right before halftime to make it 3-3. Coron gave WCU the lead back in the 56th minute, but RCNJ equalized 10 minutes later with Lombard completing the first hat trick in club history. But then, in the 89th minute, Kyle Tucker scored the game-winner for West Chester.