It’s rare that an East Hampton High School team gets a big story in Newsday, but it happened Friday, following the boys soccer team’s 3-2 win at Comsewogue the day before, a game in which Eric Armijos scored all of East Hampton’s goals, including the game-winner, with about three and a half minutes left to play.
And on Sunday, which was overcast and windy, Don McGovern’s crew did it again, winning 4-0 at Sayville as Armijos, Jose Calderon, Michael Figueroa, and John Bustamente found the nets, improving the Bonackers’ record to 7-0 in league play and to 9-1-0 over all.
“It was a great game, a great battle between two good teams,” McGovern said after the win at Comsewogue. The game at Sayville, he said during the team’s bus ride home, “was closer than the score indicated. We had the wind with us in the first half — we were up 2-0 at halftime — and they had it with them in the second, but our defense did a good job. . . . We weathered the storm — we’re rolling!”
East Hampton, thanks to the opportunistic Armijos, who can frequently thread his way through defenders with his deft ball-handling skills, led 2-0 at the half last Thursday. He broke the ice with a lofted shot from about 25 yards out in the 27th minute, and, working his way in from the left corner, leaving two defenders in his wake, he made it 2-0 in the 35th. But, at the break, McGovern and his charges knew they couldn’t let their guards down against a taller team that always was a threat on free kicks, throw-ins, and corner kicks.
Sure enough, Comsewogue scored on a header by its center midfielder, Ryan Harding, in the 56th minute, and followed up in the 63rd with a penalty kick by him that rendered the final 17 minutes all the more exciting.
Essentially, said McGovern, East Hampton kept the ball on the ground, using short passes on the way up the field, while Comsewogue tended to put it in the air, hoping that its passes would go over the heads of East Hampton’s defenders onto the feet of its on-rushing forwards.
East Hampton outshot Sayville and Comsewogue, whose goalie was credited with 10 saves vis-á-vis Nicholas Guerrero’s five. “He made great saves on Gary Gutama, Michael Figueroa, and on Eric in the second half before Eric’s winning shot,” McGovern said.
It was David Armijos, the center back, who assisted Armijos on the game-winner after parrying and gathering in a high Comsewogue kick, and lofting a pass of his own up the field to the unmarked Armijos, who, from about eight yards out, threaded between a defender and the onrushing goalie a ground-hugging shot into the lower right corner of the nets that was to send East Hampton home a winner. It was Armijos’s 10th goal of the season.
“We held tight after that,” said McGovern, “but we need to get better in our defensive third.”
Cross Country, Football
The boys cross-country team was to have had a meet here at the high school with Wyandanch last Thursday, but Wyandanch only got as far as Sunken Meadow State Park, which that school thought was the proper site. No matter: the teams were scored against each other at the Tom Knipfing invitational in Ridge on Friday, with East Hampton coming out well ahead 15-50, Kevin Barry, East Hampton’s coach, said by phone Saturday.