Soccer: Shrub Oak Panthers Complete Perfect Season

It was a fantastic way to end the East Hudson Youth Soccer League High School-B6 Division's season Sunday afternoon.

One team, the Shrub Oak Panthers (10-0), going for an unblemished season, played their cross-town rival, the Yorktown Atomics (2-6-1), who would've liked nothing more than to ruin their neighbor's perfect record at Yorktown High School.

In the first half, Yorktown played as if it was going to hand Shrub Oak its first loss of the year, the division-winning Panthers won 4-0 to finish the season unbeaten, led by three goals from Tino Di Paterio.

Scoring the game's first goal for the Panthers was Steven Toro late in the first half.

"That goal was unbelievable," Shrub Oak coach Ray Sciacca said. "We were starting to put a lot of energy forth in the second part of the first half and put a lot of pressure on their goalie and that goal just settled the team down a lot."

Toro's goal was key because in the beginning of the game, the Atomics were putting the pressure on the Panthers.

"All the kids were pretty pumped up to play," Yorktown coach Gianfranco Bastone said. "A lot of them know each other from being around the surrounding area so I think they weren't afraid to go through them. They knew that guys weren't out there to hurt them, that guys were just out there to play a good game. Being out there to go through tackles got the pace going, the momentum on our side in the first half. We weren't able to carry that out in the second half."

In the second half Di Paterio scored his first goal on a header in front of the net off a beautiful pass from Jorge Merchan.

"We had real good execution on the play," Di Paterio said. "I made the good run, Jorge got the ball outside."

Di Paterio then scored his second goal on a breakaway.

"On the breakaway I didn't want to have a hard shot, instead I just wanted to put a nice little touch on it," Di Paterio said.

His third goal came when Yorktown's second-half goalie Joseph Schmid came out of the box, going for the loose ball. Di Paterio beat him to it and scored to make it 4-0.

"That was a race," Di Paterio said. "The first one to the ball was pretty much going to have the upper hand."

 Yorktown had the upper hand in time of possession in the beginning of the game because of Michael Frasca and Matthew Saavedra's play.

"Michael is a very strong forward," Bastone said. "He's more of an attacker that makes something out of nothing. He's a very skilled, young man, up and coming. He can shoot from anywhere on the field. I put him up front for his speed and his ability to keep the keeper on his toes with his shots."

Saavedra usually plays sweeper, but Bastone put him up front for this game.

"This is the first game I have ever put Matthew up front just because of his physicality," Bastone said. "I knew that this was going to be a physical game, that he could really make a presence up front."

Goalie Michael Cesario also made his presence known. He played in the first half for the Atomics and shut the Panthers out until Toro's score.

Panther goalie Ian Thomasett had a great game in goal and so did his defense in front of him. They overcame the loss of key defender, Matt Heermance, who was injured in the beginning of the match.

Filling in for Heermance was Sean Schmitz. Also playing well for the Panthers was Vito Aliberti, who's usually a forward but can shine when asked to play midfield as well.

When Shrub Oak coach Sciacca formed the soccer team, he said they had only nine players, but a month before the season started, he recruited nine more players, bringing up the team to about 19 players. 

"If I had known what team we were going to have, I would've registered us for a higher division," he said. 

"It's just been a wonderful season," Sciacca said. "I have been on the other side where we haven't won a game in a season, so I know how that feels like. I have never come in first place before and I have been coaching for 12 years."