Sag Harbor United, the 7-on-7 men’s soccer league’s leader, and Maidstone Market, which has been the league’s power year in, year out since 2007, were to have met in a regular season-ending game at East Hampton’s Herrick Park on Aug. 23, but the latter, because it could muster only four players, was forced to forfeit.
“I’m rooting for him” — Domingo Perez, S.H.U.’s manager — said Maidstone’s coach, John Romero Sr., when the playoffs were mentioned. “He always has 14 guys — they all show up every time.”
Sag Harbor United, which not all that long ago used to be the league’s patsy, but which is now its pre-eminent team, had already clinched the playoffs’ top seed. Because of the forfeit, Perez’s crew, which was augmented this summer by Donald Martinez, formerly of F.C. Tuxpan, and by Mario Olaya, formerly of Maidstone, finished the regular season at 9-1, and was to have met the fourth seed, East Hampton Soccer Club, in the first of two semifinal showdowns at the park Tuesday. Liga De Gulag, the third seed, was to have played second-seeded F.C. Tuxpan in that night’s second game.
This is the first time in 30 seasons that Maidstone Market, a 15-time champion that has boasted such players as Joel (Bazooka) Gomez, Cesar Galea, Gehider Garcia, Luis Correa, Diego Marles, Antonio Padilla, Xavi Piedramartel, Jefferson Ramirez, and Julian Barahona, has not made the playoffs. The season began badly, Romero said, when three recruits, all 18-year-olds who had recently graduated from East Hampton High School, were banned from the league permanently for fighting in the second game the Market played, with Liga De Gulag. Two of Liga’s players were banned forever as well. Then, said Romero, his team was beset by a number of injuries.
“But we’ll be back,” he said, with a smile, in parting.
That night’s second game, between the East Hampton Soccer Club, which won the league’s fall championship, and Liga De Gulag, was, as predicted by the league’s manager, Leslie Czeladko, a hard-fought one, winding up in a 2-2 tie, which, insofar as the playoff seedings went, worked in Liga’s favor.
Sebastian Fuquen got the Soccer Club on the board early in the second half, after a fellow forward, Mark Bako, had been taken down in the box, with a ground-hugging penalty kick into the right corner of the nets that barely got by Liga’s agile goalie, Franco Loja. Liga came right back with a nifty goal into the left corner of the cage by Santiago Solis. A fluky shot soon after by Bako — a shot from about 15 yards out that caromed high off the shoulder of a defender before spinning down under the crossbar as Loja leaped in vain to stop it — put the Soccer Club 2-1. But Liga came back again, on a goal from the right side by Esteban Solis. And so it ended, there being no overtime periods played in the league’s regular season games.
The night’s third game, between F.C. Tuxpan and Tortorella Pools, Czeladko’s team, was won 2-0 by Tuxpan, which finished the season at 5-2-3. Liga De Gulag finished at 2-5-3, and the Soccer Club wound up at 2-3-5. The Market ended the season at 2-6-2, and Tortorella Pools at 2-7-1.