On a wet and soggy Saturday afternoon, the annual Lynbrook Soccer Charity Day was held at Marion Street Elementary School on 9/28. With the help of the Lynbrook Soccer Booster Club, a day of 4 back-to-back games were played with lots of food and merchandise available as well as on site vendors and food trucks with a portion of all sales going to support both the Ronald McDonald House Charities Metro NY and the senior soccer scholarships.

After seeing the JV Boys drop a 0-2 decision to Kellenberg Memorial, the JV Girls play to a 2-2 draw also to Kellenberg and the Varsity Girls a 3-0 win over Carle Place, the Varsity Boys were ready for their turn to take the field. The halves were shortened to 35 minutes from the traditional 40 and the home team, wearing special uniforms for the day, opened the scoring first when Marco Pantano netted his 4 of the season heading in a service from Devin Ryan. Ryan got the ball off a set play designed off a corner kick. A few minutes later, Carle Place leveled the game a 1 when Ryan Leary beat keeper Jake Prince (5 saves) after he got behind the defense with the ball.

Lynbrook struck again when a deflected ball was misplayed by the the Carle Place keeper who saw the ball bounce over his head. Jacob Wolkoff was able to head the ball towards the net where the Carle Place defender miskicked the ball into the net for an own goal. The lead was short lived as Leary once again got past the Owls backline but this time, Prince disrupted the chance but unfortunately his follow through tripped up Leary in the box leading to a penalty shot. Carle Place converted the penalty try to even the score at 2 before they took their first lead of the game on Leary’s second goal of the game late in the first half. The first half ended with the Frogs holding on to a 1-goal lead.

Halftime saw the home team make a number of personnel changes to get many of the players into the game. Aiden Michaels continued to play in the defense unit and was joined back there by Naseer Gaffoor and Dylan Hernandez. In the midfield Axel Casares and Fabian Safsten Suarez slid into the center. at the offensive end of the field, Gabe Gallagher took on the striker role. Lynbrook continued to rotate in their reserves looking for some valuable playing time from the rest of the team. Carle Place extended their lead in the game to 4-2 when Leary completed his first career hat trick when he knocked the ball over second half keeper Grayson Prestianni (3 saves) in the early minutes of the second half. Lynbrook continued to rotate players every 10-12 minutes looking to find minutes for all available Owl players.

With light fading and all of the Lynbrook players seeing the field, some of the regulars were given some late time and it seemed to energize the Owls as they worked the ball deep into the Carle Place end. With 6 minutes on the click, Mike Werzinger took a through ball from Marco Pantano to net and fired home the ball past the Carle Place keeper to get the Owls within 1. Less than a minute later, Pantano changed the field to Eddie Stradowski who took the ball down the right side and served a ball to the far post that found its way into the back left netting of the goal. The game ended in a 4-4 draw.

Thank you to Coach Reardon and the Carle Place Frogs for once again joining us of Soccer Charity Day. You can watch the game on Varsity Media at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=neiZAV5BglE.

The Lynbrook Boys are back in action Monday as they host Clarke HS in a critical league game to keep there playoff hopes alive. Come out and support the boys as they kick off at 5:30PM at North MS.

Pictures from the game will be posted soon.
Picture is of the JV Boys team.