East Hampton Advances in Boys' Soccer and Girls' Volleyball

Update:

The East Hampton vs. Valley Regional boys' soccer Shoreline tourney final scheduled for Saturday has been postponed till Monday or Tuesday.

Original story:

The East Hampton boys’ soccer team advanced to the Shoreline Conference tournament final with a 4-2 victory against Haddam-Killingworth on Thursday at home.

The Bellringers (16-1) broke open a close game with four second-half goals, three by Kenny Steer, who has been carrying the offensive load of late.

Nate Heroux got the Bellringers started with a goal off a header to break a 0-0 tie before Steer took over. With the score 2-1, Steer banged in a rebound for a two-goal lead, but Haddam-Killingworth (10-6-1) scored late to make it 3-2. Steer then put the hard-fought and physical game away with 1:19 remaining with his third goal.

“I think the intensity of the game picked up and it became a more physical game, for sure,” East Hampton coach Bob Boscarino said. “H-K is a hard-nosed team, they play hard. You saw almost like two different games. The first half was kind of, not that it was laid back, but kind of both teams feeling themselves out a little bit. The second half, I think the emotions got a hold of everybody.”

Emotions were running high late. Bellringers senior Jacob Beebe got tangled with a Haddam-Killingworth player and some pushing ensued. It was Beebe, however, who got a yellow card. A short time later, another Bellringer got a yellow card, this time Matt Vasquenza. Vasquenza got carded for kicking the ball away from the goalkeeper and out of bounds after an offside call.

Initially it was thought both players would not be able to start in the tournament final against Valley Regional on Saturday, sitting by rule for 10 minutes, perhaps longer. That’s not the case. Athletic Director Shaun Russell confirmed Friday that no penalty is carried over and would only have been applied had the game against H-K gone into overtime and penalty kicks.

As for the first half, East Hampton senior Adam Guy felt the Bellringers dominated and need to do better at taking advantage of their opportunities.

“For the most part we’ve been a pretty big offensive threat,” Guy said. “This game, however, our inability to capitalize on our opportunities is what killed us. The score in the first half said it was a close game, but there was clearly an offensive domination from us. But it doesn’t matter, we need to get balls in on our opportunities. Going forward, this is what we need to work on. Our defense, for the most part, was good today. Played a good hard game. We got to keep the physical ability up and we’ll go and play our hardest on Saturday.

As for Steer’s scoring prowess the second half of the season, Boscarino pointed out that part of the reason is that having two quality goal scorers makes it difficult for teams to match up.

“In the early season it was Matt and the roles have kind of reversed a bit,” Boscarino said. “The problem for a lot of teams is it could be anyone of them. We have two very potent guys that can take over a game at any point in time. I think that’s what makes it very difficult to play us, that we have that luxury.

But Boscarino couldn’t end without praising Steer for what he has accomplished and meant to the team.

“Kenney’s been phenomenal,” he said.

The game against Valley Regional (16-1) is currently scheduled for Saturday but no decision has been made to the start time and location. The game was to be played at Cromwell but because of last weekend’s storm, the impact on fields and school cancelations, that location, and even the date of the game, remains in question as of Friday afternoon.

The Bellringers defeated the Warriors 2-1 in Deep River on Sept. 24.

Girls’ Volleyball

Shoreline Tournament Semifinal

The East Hampton girls’ volleyball team shook off some early rust to go on and sweep Haddam-Killingworth 3-0 at home on Thursday in a Shoreline tournament semifinal match.

The Bellringers won, 25-23, 25-17 and 25-14.

The match did not start off well for East Hampton. The Bellringers fell behind in the first set 8-1 when coach John Post called timeout.

“It just looked like we weren’t the same team out there,” Post said. “We weren’t having fun. We weren’t playing our brand of volleyball. That’s pretty much all I said. It took 20 seconds.”

Seconds well spent. H-K (14-5) increased it lead to 9-1 before East Hampton (17-2) rallied. Having snuffed out the Cougars’ best chance to steal a set, the Bellringers took control from there.

“I thought we were control,” Post said of the second and third sets “We played our brand of volleyball. We got kills off our defense. We were aggressive with our serving. Marissa [Morassini] ran our offense beautifully. I couldn’t ask for a better effort from the girls after those first 10 points.”

The only blemish on an otherwise perfect regular season, are two losses to Morgan (19-0). The Bellringers lost to the Huskies 3-0 in the season opener on Sept. 13 and 3-2 at Morgan on Oct. 10.

That’s who is next and East Hampton isn’t shying away from the challenge.

“That’s the team to beat,” Post said. “They’re in it every year for a reason. We have to not worry about who we’re playing and stick to playing our game. We have to minimize what they do offensively and keep being aggressive.

Said Morassini: “I think it’s a great opportunity. Me and Ashley [Chasse], my libero, we’re seniors now so we’ve worked these couple years to get the skills to beat Morgan and we’re really excited and we’re just really happy that we have another chance to do it.”

The Shoreline tournament final will be played Saturday at 6 p.m. at Haddam-Killingworth. The location is a change from being at Cromwell because of the impact last weekend’s storm has had on school cancellations.

“We keep growing as a team,” Post said. “I’m really impressed with the way they’re playing.”