Clarkstown North Boys Lacrosse Opens Season with 10-6 Loss to New Rochelle

Clarkstown North boys lacrosse opened up its season at home with a 10-6 loss to New Rochelle on a chilly Wednesday afternoon.

Both teams played hard, however, New Rochelle displayed more fluidity and cohesiveness on the offensive end to get the job done.  As is to be expected from a season-opener, both teams showed they still have kinks to work out both offensively and defensively.

The high scoring game was a roller coaster ride as the two teams fought to start their seasons off with a win.  After falling behind 2-0 in the first, North fought its way back to tie it at the half and then take the lead to start the third for a total of three unanswered goals. 

New Rochelle then regained their composure as they answered back with three points of their own to regain the lead.  North fired back with another two goals to leave the game tied 5-5 going into the fourth.  However, the fourth quarter was all New Rochelle, as they outscored North 5-1 to win the game, 10-6.

Vincent Barbetto and Kevin Reilly each led the Rams in scoring with two goals a piece.  Freshman goalie Nick Goldberg started out his career with 12 saves out of 22 shots on goal.

After finishing last season with a record of 1-15, the Rams are looking to create a much better season for themselves this year. 

“Obviously, we want to improve on last year's record,” said the Rams head coach John Fitzgerald.  “We want a better finish than last year.  Those are the goals that we set for our team at the beginning of our season.”

One of the positives for them this year is that they will have a lot of experience on their side. 

The Rams are returning their entire defense in Anthony Porco, Adam Dabrowski, Sam Askenas and Chris Ramirez-Apuzzo, who is in his fourth year as a varsity defender.  With seniors Gerard Damiani and Kevin Reilly returning with junior Vincent Barbetto, they will have some experience there as  well.  On the negative side, they lost their four year starting goalie in David Toporek, however, freshman Nick Goldberg and junior Joe Ramirez-Apuzzo are working hard to step up to the challenge.

“We’ve changed our offense, so we’re looking to be a little bit more offensive-minded,” said Fitzgerald.  “We have some experience coming back.  Hopefully speed and, like I said, we changed our offense.  Today wasn’t a very good indication, but that’s what we’re hoping will happen.  First game of the season, hopefully we’ll work out the kinks.”

Besides for in the goal, the team also has some new additions joining them this year.

“We’ve got Ricky Straniere, he’s up from the JV,” said Fitzgerald.  “He should help us a lot.  We’ve got some new mid-fielders.  Alex Schloss came up from the JV, Richie McKaba came up from the JV and Brian Rinciari’s coming back.  It’s his senior year, he took a year off because he had an elbow injury last year.  So he’s back and we’re just trying to piece it together.”

With these new additions and the retention of the majority of last years talent, the team is in a good position to improve on last season.  The team is balanced offensively and defensively, however the key, according to Fitzgerald, will be their experience and development over the season.

“I think it’s pretty balanced,” said Fitzgerald.  “We’ve got a lot of experience, like I said, coming back on defense.  We have Gerard Damiani whose a third year varsity player on attack, Kevin Reilly’s back as a senior, so I’m hoping that we just develop and mature.  The guys that are back, have an extra year under their belt and hopefully the seniors step up and lead the team.”

The teams for them to beat this year will be Suffern and South.  As Fitzgerald put it, “Suffern always.  Probably South, we haven’t beaten South in about 15 or 16 years.”

Leading this effort and giving them that extra boost will be the teams top talent, Gerard Damiani, Kevin Reilly and Chris Ramirez-Apuzzo.  In an interview following the game, Damiani spoke about the upcoming year.  In his own words, Damiani’s main strength’s are “Just to help out my teammates, play the system, spread the offense out, work the ball around and not always look to score, but help out and spread the ball about.”

Damiani shared his coach’s goals this season and expanded on them as well.

“[My goals are] to do better than last year,” said Damiani.  “I want to win more games and for everyone to give 100% on the field and play hard and I just want to make a better name for North lacrosse.”

He is optimistic about his team’s ability to achieve these goals this season.

“I feel like we have more guys who want to work hard and play for a team and are dedicated and want to make something better than what happened in the past,” said Damiani.  “Start a better name for North lacrosse.” 

On a personal note, he added, “I want to end out in a good year.  I’m a senior and it’s my last year of playing.  I’ve been playing lacrosse since I was younger, 5^th grade, and I just want to end that with a bang.”

Though Damiani is most excited to face off against those teams in their league, he acknowledged that they’re really excited for every game.  Their next game will be at Albertus Magnus on Friday, April 1 at 4:15 p.m.