Boys Soccer
South, Amherst, Sweet Home fall in prequarters
by PATRICK J. NAGY Reporter

Sweet Home's Matt Sommer keeps the ball away from a West Seneca West player during the Panthers' 1-0 shootout loss in the Section VI Class AA prequarterfinals on Saturday. Photo by John Rusac

Three of the five Town of Amherst varsity boys soccer teams in the Section VI playoffs saw early exits.

Williamsville South, Amherst, and Sweet Home all saw their seasons end in the prequarterfinals.

In Class A, South, seeded thirteenth, fell 2-0 at home to Grand Island, seeded fourth. Amherst, seeded ninth, lost 3-0 to eighth-seed Starpoint. In Class AA, Sweet Home, seeded eleventh, lost to sixth-seed West Seneca West, 1-0, in a shootout.

Williamsville South

South's Achilles heel of not capitalizing in on scoring opportunities came back to haunt them against Grand Island.

"It's the same thing that's been going on all year," said South coach Peter Sugg. "In the first minute or two, we had two very good chances to score and just didn't put them in. Two minutes later, they came down and scored."

Josh Snyder put Grand Island ahead 1-0 4:30 into the first half. Tom Sukmanowski put the Vikings up 2-0 with 11:30 remaining.

"In the second half, we played pretty well," said Sugg. "We played like a team that was down 1-0 and only had 40 minutes left in their season if they didn't get it going."

Sugg felt his team played a little better than Grand Island in the second half.

"I thought a few different times we were going to get a goal to tie it up," he said. "I thought we were putting enough pressure on them to get the tying goal. We just couldn't pop it in."

South finished 2-4-4, the fewest games played in a season in school history.

"It was a season of missed opportunities," said Sugg. "For me, all four games that we tied are games that we should have won. A lot of coaches say that but I'm not one of them. We didn't take advantage of our chances and never could get a little streak going."

"I had a great group of guys after the game but the effort was there all year," he added. "The expectations were clearly much higher.

Matt Kwarta led South with five goals. Marc Morelli and Zach Schwartz tallied four goals each. Sugg loses seven seniors - Kwarta, Morrelli, goalie Pat Pidgeon, Tyler Tucker, Dave Spada, Adam Clukey, Aaron Lennert and Chris Amara.

"Our expectations were high this year and for us to not even come close to meeting them, I feel extra bad for the seniors that we didn't get it done," said Sugg.

Amherst Central

The Tigers lost twice all season and both defeats came to Starpoint. Starpoint beat Amherst, 2-0, earlier in the season.

Amherst coach Bobby DiNunzio said his team controlled 75 percent of the first half yet trailed 2-0 at halftime.

"They probably had three shots and two of them went in," said DiNunzio. "They weren't even shots. They were balls in the box that were put across and stopped in the water and the kid put it in the empty net. The second goal they had was a miscommunication between our goalie and defender and the kid stepped between them and put it in the open net."

In addition, Amherst's Steve Devlin received a yellow card for slide tackling a Starpoint player for the ball 15 minutes into the first half.

"When you get a yellow card, you have to take your kid out," said DiNunzio. "Then I had to make adjustments. That killed us right in the beginning when he went out."

DiNunzio credits Starpoint goalie Kyle Craig (10 saves) as game MVP.

Amherst finished 10-2-2. DiNunzio loses 13 seniors and eight starters to graduation. They are Devlin, Mike Schriever, Will Gowen, Kevin Rogers, Wyatt Jacobi. Will Africano, Tom Stofko and Trevor Smith.

"I think we had a good year," said DiNunzio. "We were in a weaker division and I expected to win more games, which we did."

"I think for the most part we met our expectations," he added. "In my opinion, we were the better team and the ball just didn't go in for us."

Sweet Home

West Seneca West's Jordan Pingitore scored the deciding goal in a shootout to eliminate the Panthers. West won 3-2 in the shootout. Josh Hicks and Eric Schnirel scored for Sweet Home.

The game was tied after regulation and two 15-minute sudden death overtime sessions.

"We just missed some opportunities in the game," said Sweet Home coach Chris Hershey. "I thought we carried play for most of the game. They have a good goalkeeper - Kevin Meegan. We had a free kick at the top of the box and he made a good save on Eric Schnirel with five to ten minutes left in the game."

"I couldn't have asked any more out of my guys," he added. "They did everything I asked them to do."

Meegan finished with 12 saves.

Hershey lauded the play of his goalie Tim Arnold, who made eight stops and senior defender Matt Bordonaro, who he said "played his best game hands down."

"He went well and beyond what he needed to do in his role," Hershey said. "He created some great scoring opportunities and saved us a couple of times defensively. He saved one on a kick that had beaten our goaltender and was headed for the back of the net but he was right at the post where he needed to be to knock it out."

Sweet Home finished 2-8 in league, 2-11 overall.

The Panthers lose nine seniors to graduation. They are Schnirel, who led he team with eight goals, Peter Brady, Bordonaro, Josh Hicks, Ian Carr, Rob Jones, Matt Sommer, Greg Alt-Winzig and Ryan Murray.

"Teams were coming for us this year and sometimes we let in more goals that we wanted to but to the kids credit, they never quit," said Hershey.

e-mail: pnagy@beenews.com