Hassocks have completed the signing of former Hartwick Hawks and Burgess Hill Town midfielder Kit Tregear – and it already looks like quite the capture for the Robins if his debut against Pagham at the Beacon on Saturday was anything to go by.
Tregear ended the day being voted as Supporters’ Man of the Match for the 2-0 victory over the Lions. He gave an all-action performance in the middle of the park alongside Dan Stokes, with only a brilliant bit of defending preventing Tregear from marking his first appearance in a Hassocks shirt with a goal.
The moment arrived right on the stroke of half time. Stokes had played in James Littlejohn, who in turn delivered a cross into the Pagham box.
Tregear meanwhile was embarking on a perfectly timed run into the area, where he looked set to meet Littlejohn’s volley with a side foot volley until Lions defender Tom Lyne flew in from nowhere to nick the ball away from
Tregear with one of the best timed slide tackles the Beacon has seen in some time.
There were other glimpses of quality too, Tregear winning back possession with a crunching tackle in midfield before playing a visionary pass over the top for Phil Johnson to latch onto. Johnson’s resulting effort trickled just wide of the post after he’d just beaten Pagham goalkeeper Tom Crook to the ball.
Those Hassocks regulars who follow Mid Sussex football would not have been surprised to see such a performance; Tregear has after all been a familiar name on the circuit since breaking into the Burgess Hill Town first team as a 17-year-old during the 2011-12 season.
Tregear had been on the books at Brighton and Hove Albion as a youngster, joining the Hillians’ youth set up in 2010. He was a key part of one of Hill’s most successful ever Under 18s sides, winning back-to-back Isthmian
League titles as well as completing a league and cup double at the end of the 2011-12 campaign.
As already noted, he was firmly enshrined in Hill’s first team set up by that point in time with a loan spell in the Southern Combination League Premier Division at Shoreham following during the first half of the 2012-13 season.
Tregear spent the second half of that season with Lancing before moving to America in the summer of 2013, where he spent the next four seasons playing for Hartwick College’s soccer team, the Hartwick Hawks.
He missed just one game in his first three seasons in the United States, being named the Most Valuable Player in the Sun Belt Conference as the Hawks won the league title in the 2014-15 season.
In 2015-16, the Hawks lost out in the championship play off final to Georgia State but Tregear again had an impressive year, this time taking the Defensive Athlete of the Year and in his final season with Hartwick, he picked up the prestigious Jim Lennox Men’s Soccer Award.
As Tregear arrives, so Hassocks say farewell to striker Ben Bacon who was returned to Isthmian League South East side Three Bridges for a second spell at Jubilee Field.
Bridges are the third club that Bacon has played for in the 2019-20 season, having called time on his second spell with Steyning Town in August to join Hassocks for a second spell at the Beacon.
