Sachem East Boys Fall To Smithtown West

The Sachem East Boy's Lacrosse team will look to bounce back today against Middle Country after losing a frustrating game to Smithtown West on Wednesday.

The Flaming Arrows were only down by two goals after the first quarter, but in the second quarter defensive breakdowns led to a flurry of goals from Smithtown and East found themselves having to play catchup the rest of the game.

That proved to be too daunting a task especially when the team couldn't secure many consecutive possessions by winning faceoffs consistently.

"We played hard for four quarters, said Assistant Coach Justin O'Connell. "The difference was at the faceoff X. To credit them, that kid did a phenomenal job and when we tried to go on a run he took it away and they capitalized on it."

O'Connell filled in as interim coach for the game after a family emergency kept Head Coach Robert Murphy away. O'Connell said they tried different approaches to win the faceoffs in order to put together a string of goals that might have closed the gap on Smithtown West.

"We tried pushing a lot of different buttons there to slow them down, but we kind of just didn't have an answer for the time being," O'Connell said. "But for the amount of defense our kids played I thought they did pretty well. Tomorrow it's back to work and we'll go from there."

Scoring for Sachem East in the 18-9 loss was John Vigh, Tom Engelken, AJ Solomito, Jason DeBenedictus, Joe Eiseman and Mike Buencamino.

The team is home today for a 4:30 p.m. game on its turf. 

"This [loss] will resonate for about an hour and then it's on to Middle Country," O'Connell said. "It's another league opponent who's gonna be ready to play and we need to be ready to play as well."