OLEAN, N.Y. — For three years, the boys’ Corporate Cup belonged in New York. After a first-ever loss at the hands of Pennsylvania, the Empire State boys team is out for vengeance.

New York took the inaugural game, back in 2017, 1-0. It won the next two, 2-1 and 4-2 in 2018 and 2019, but Pennsylvania won last year, 4-1, in a long-delayed game initially scheduled for the spring until organizers could finally hold it under COVID regulations in August.

The NY/PA Corporate Cup Soccer Showcase (girls game at 5 p.m., boys at 8 on Sunday at Olean’s Bradner Stadium) is once again playing in the summer, but the boys’ coaches described this year’s lead-up as much more normal.

“I think it almost works to the kids’ benefit (to play in the summer), because a lot of the kids who are playing in this game are also playing on club teams now,” said Nick Perillo, the New York boys head coach from Cuba Rushford. “They’re getting a lot more touches and stuff, so maybe it’ll give us some better show out when it comes time for game time. Sometimes you get (to) April and the kids haven’t played since the season in the fall.”

Perillo has worked the game three times as an assistant coach, but this is his first time leading the New York boys.

“I just think it’s awesome,” Perillo said of the showcase game. “There are colleges in the area, but it’s not every day you get to pretty much make an all-star team with kids from the area, play (against) a different state and kind of showcase yourself. Because the game’s (live-streamed) on Facebook if the coach can’t come, it’s exciting for the kids to play in this big game with a lot of fans, where they get announced. That makes it real special so I guess that’s the most fun about it. It gives them a good opportunity to showcase themselves.”

Allegany-Limestone has six members of the New York squad: Hudson Kwiatkowski, Zach Luce, Connor Bates, Chance LaCroix, Ryley McKnight and Jack Conroy.

Olean (Quintin Allen, Joe Magro, Alex Linderman) and Ellicottville (Noah Steinbroner, Bryce Butler, Jamison Caldwell) both had three players, while Randolph (Ethan Shields, Bryson Rozler), Portville (Nate Petryszak, Thomas Carls) and Fillmore (Mitch Ward, Jackson Cool) have two each. Salamanca (Reece Redeye-Desposito), Bolivar-Richburg (Hunter Stuck), Cuba-Rushford (Chandler Wirth), Hinsdale (Damion Brown) and Belfast (Matt Weaver) all have one player on the squad.

“I’m most excited because it’s a lot of players that have played before on this team,” Perillo, the fifth-year C-R coach, said. “Being the coach at Cuba-Rushford, you only see three or four of the available players that are invited to try out to this, so it’s really nice to not just kind of be thrown into the tryout and, say this kid might have had a bad tryout, now I actually know some of the kids. I’m hoping that the camaraderie of the guys who have been here two or three Corporate Cups now, I’m hoping that’ll help us lead into a good result on Sunday.”

Perillo hopes his team can prove last year’s one-sided loss was an aberration.

“I kind of brought that up a couple times in practice,” Perillo said, “like last year was tough to watch for the New York coaches because it seemed like there wasn’t that energy, that fire that there’s been in the past and I don’t know if it’s the COVID year or what, but Pennsylvania just brought it last year. So I’m hoping that there’s enough kids where they have that sitting on the edge there, where they’re waiting to avenge that. That’s obviously my hope.”

On the Pennsylvania side, Warren coach Denny Flatt will look to start a winning streak. Flatt said his PA boys roster includes “seven or eight” members of last year’s winning squad. Among them is Curwensville’s Jake Mullins, who scored one of PA’s four goals in its first-ever Corporate Cup boys win last summer.

Bradford has four representatives on the roster, most of any PA school: Ciaran Conneely, Ethan Little, Andrew Kane and Jaydon Warnick.

Warren (Parks Ordiway, Jack Darling, Alex Ferry), Brockway (Jared Marchiori, Noah Bash, Lewis Painter) and St. Marys (Matthew Palmer, Collin Klin, Vini Nunes) all have three players; Port Allegany/Smethport (River Cramer, Ty Guilds), Elk County Catholic (Timothy Brannock, Anthony Messineo) and Kane (Justin Mishic, Josh Greville) have two each. DuBois (Justin Kalgren), Curwensville (Jake Mullins), Johnsonburg (Aaron Myers), Northern Potter (Ryan Langworthy) and Ridgway (Jack Benninger).

Flatt, a two-time Corporate Cup assistant and six-year Warren coach, sees plenty of talent on his team after a difficult tryout process.

“They’re all good players,” he said. “We had to make some cuts to narrow our roster down to 24. Quite a few were cut and they were good players too. What stands out is that they’re all there for a reason. It’s a corporate game but it’s basically an all-star game too. One of the biggest obstacles is just getting them to play as a team, play as a unit.

“What it comes down to is they’re all good players and it’s fun coaching when they all have an above-average skill level and there’s some really good (players). They’re basically all there because they want to be there and they take pride in the game and they have fun doing what they do. The practices fly by because we only have two hours each session, there’s a lot to get done each session. One of the things is to figure out where everyone belongs.”

Flatt considers “intensity” one of the constants to his coaching philosophy: even in a showcase event, he wants players to play with it, all of the time.

“We come out from the time we start until the end and I expect full intensity even though it’s a corporate game, it’s a fun game, it’s still a very competitive game and it’s basically just come out full throttle and let’s play the 90 minutes,” he said. “If you make a mistake, correct it. It’s one of those things juggling, trying to get 24 players into a game. Where in a typical game you might play 15, 16 (players) in a high school game, I’ve got 24 to get into a game. That’s always in the back of our head. But basically, it’s their day to play as a team, play as a unit, one person is not going to win the match.

“Team chemistry, even though it’s been four practices, I’m sure the New York coaches would say the same thing, you have the skill that you need but it’s just a matter of working with a team that you’ve never played with before.”