“C” Change
Fallsburg Holds Sway Over New Array Of Lady Spartans In First League Match Up Of the New Year; Seward Hurt By Five Veteran Opt-Out As Former State Contender Goes To War Without Fire-Tested Platoon
Fallsburg 46, S.S. Seward 37
By RICHARD A. ROSS
Scenes from Fallsburg's league victory over S.S. Seward (clockwise): Fallsburg's Celia Garcia opens the scoring with a three-pointer. She ended up with 11 points on the night. Seward Coach Joe DiMattina draws up a scheme for an offensive set. Fallsburg's Shanice Mack scores two of her game-high 13 points on the night. Pressure defense by Fallsburg's Celia Garcia and Shanice Mack bottle up Seward's Brittany Siezcek. Fallsburg Coach Daniel Redmond uses a time out to stress consistency. Seward junior Julie Allen advances the ball up the floor as Fallsburg's Sheryl Pinder eyes her closely.
FALLSBURG, NY- “The Times They Are A-Changing,” the title of a sixties anthem by Bob Dylan seems timelessly relevant nowadays in so many respects. 2011 was marked by uprisings and protests aimed at seeking greater democracy and justice. Time Magazine selected “Protester” as the Man of the year. Change has become the byword of our times.
Sports mirrors life as I’ve often noted and as such, change is as inevitable in the hierarchy of athletics as it is in other aspects of human enterprise. “The first one now will later be last,” sang Dylan, predicting an inversion of the political and social paradigm. Those words and their opposite implication that those who once were at the bottom would soar to new heights, reflect the kind of shift we seem to see all around us.
When it comes to the Lady Spartans of S.S. Seward, the idea of change now applies to basketball, though remarkably, not to soccer.
Ever the threat to drive to the rim or square up to shoot the long ball, Fallsburg's Sheryl Pinder is much on the mind of opposing coaches. On nights when Fallsburg gets balanced scoring from other players, the Lady Comets are dangerous to say the least.
Under the watch of Coach Joe DiMattina, Seward has had an incredible amount of success in both sports. Selected by The Times Herald-Record as Coach of the Year in both girls soccer and basketball in 2006 and 2007, DiMattina has inspired an unfathomable run by the Lady Spartans in soccer. This past fall he steered his team to its 11th straight Section Nine title, eight of those coming since his arrival from Tuxedo in 2004.
Two state soccer championships and a bevy of trips to the final four have defined one of the most salient small school records of success in NYSPHSAA history.
And for a few seasons, success on the hardwood was impressive too. The Lady Spartans were Section Nine Class C champs in 2004-05. In 2006-07 they won Section Nine again and lost in the state final to Hammond 52-51.In 2007-08 they lost in the quarterfinals to Haldane. Small schools are particularly vulnerable to the ebb and flow of talent, but Seward has proven itself to be a rare exception to that precept in other sports including boys soccer, boys basketball and more recently in cross-country and track.
Looking forward to this season, DiMattina fully expected a veteran team to be taking the floor in the daunting Class C wars that now include rival Tuxedo down from Class B, as well as Tri-Valley, Fallsburg and Chester. But instead he discovered that five players he expected to be a part of this year’s campaign found various reasons to not come out. The result was obvious in the Lady Spartan’s first league encounter of the year, a January 3 tilt with the host Lady Comets of Fallsburg, a team rife with experience and talent that resulted in the 46-37 Fallsburg victory.
Coach Daniel Redmond’s strategy was to press Seward and to control the offensive and defensive glass. Most importantly, Redmond knew that his team needed a balanced attack, not a one-person show. By night’s end the Lady Comets would have a trio of players in double figures as Shanice Mack would lead all scorers with 13 points, followed by 11 each from Kelsey Moody and Celia Garcia.
Garcia opened the scoring with a swishing three less than a minute into the game. In that opening minute each team had turned the ball over. Seward would suffer from far more of these exchanges than Fallsburg by night’s end.
Seward's Kelsey O'Dell looks to pass the ball as she is closely guarded by Fallsburg's Kelsey Moody.
Mack’s turnaround jumper and a pair of free throws from Sheryl Pinder led to a 7-0 Fallsburg lead. Seward shots weren’t dropping. Mack had a put back on the weak side to make it 9-0. The Comets led 13-4 at the end of the first quarter as Moody scored four. Seward got its first basket at 1:31 of the first quarter as Maggie Paras finally ended the drought. Veteran Lindsey Dunn provided the other bucket for the Lady Spartans.
DiMattina consistenly drew up the strategy for the offensive sets but it took the Lady Spartans quite some time to execute what he called for. When they did, it worked. The question he posited was would they continue to do so on subsequent trips. As the game moved along there was certainly an improvement over the miasma of the first half.
The Lady Comets led 22-12 at the half, as their second quarter production diminished. They outscored Seward 9-8 in the second stanza. Seward got six of its eight points from Kelsey O’Dell but foul trouble would consign her to miss valuable minutes in the second half. Junior sparkplug Julie Allen provide the other two points in the quarter.
She looked impressive with her hustle and her ability to distribute the ball from the point.
Fallsburg’s second quarter output came via six points from Mack, two from Nyasia Harris and a free throw from Garcia.
Fallsburg erupted for 16 points in the third quarter led by seven from Moody to go along with a trey from Samantha Rivera, a bucket from Pinder and three free throws from Garcia who ended up shooting six-for-nine from the stripe. The Lady Comets were 12-for-24 (50%) by night’s end from the line.
A big edge in rebounding by bigs Moody and Mack helped Fallsburg to dominate the inside game and score many points in the paint.
Seward got five of its nine third quarter points from Brittany Siezcek. Allen and Amanda Tantillo scored a bucket apiece in the period.
Fallsburg's Kali Seastrand soars above the crowd. The Lady Comets will bring their spirit and verve to the Monticello Cheerleading Competition on January 7.
Seward saved the best for last as it amassed 16 points in the final frame to double up Fallsburg’s eight in the stanza. Seven of Seward’s points came from Dunn who had swished a three. She ended up with nine to lead the Lady Comets on the night. Allen added four, Sieczek had a trey and Katie Moos added a bucket to bring the orange total to 37 on the night, the most points they’ve scored in their 3-3 season to date. They are 0-1 in Division V.
Four of Fallsburg’s final eight points came from Garcia. Mack and Moody had a bucket apiece in the final frame. Fallsburg is now 4-3 (1-2 OCIAA). Fallsburg lost to Chester and Eldred in prior league games.
DiMattina viewed this as his team’s best game to date. “We’ve been having a slow start because of losing those girls who didn’t come out.” He praised the play of Allen at the point guard who has had to adjust to stepping into that position, a different role from the one she played a year ago.
“It’s just a new team. It takes getting to know each other a little bit more, knowing where we fit in and knowing our role,” said DiMattina. “We know it’s going to be rough in Class C this year but I’m hoping that we play a little bit more aggressively.
It was positive that we were able to score when Lindsey (Dunn) was on the bench. She missed a third of the game.
Redmond knows his work over the past four years is paying off. “I thought our defense did well in spurts. We pressed them at times though we’ve had to change things up in that regard due to the season-ending injury of Paige Seletsky who tore her ACL in Fallsburg’s recent win over Livingston Manor.
“That’s a huge loss in terms of her hustle points and her defense. We’ll have to do the best without her. We brought in Samantha Rivera who played JV last year. She’s not scared to shoot the ball. Kelsey and Shanice have been playing well together. Redmond reiterated the need for balanced scoring when the load doesn’t have to fall solely on Sheryl Pinder.
Redmond knows his team will be tested against the other league opponents besides Chester and Eldred. They play Tuxedo and Chester in back-to-back home games on January 17-18. “We ready for the challenge and we play so much better on our court. I was able to get a lot of subs in tonight.”
Fallsburg travels to play Family School on January 5 and then on to Roscoe on January 9 before heading to Tri-Valley on January 13. The Lady Spartans host Tri-Valley on January 5, travel to Eldred on January 9 and then host Tuxedo on January 13.
Visit www.sportsinsights.smugmug.com for an album of photos.
On The Rebound
Seward Puts Stinging Loss To Tuxedo In Rearview Mirror With Rhythmic Romp Over Tri-Valley; Lady Spartans and Lady Bears Slated To Play In Sectional Opener As Seward Looks To Begin Another Storied Postseason Run; Loyas Edges Closer To 100-Career Goal Milestone; Stam Scores The Hat Trick
S.S. Seward 7, Tri-Valley 0
By RICHARD A. ROSS
rross@sportsinsightsny.com
Scenes from a sectional preview between Tri-Valley and S.S. Seward (Clockwise): T-V's Vicky Tingley throws the ball in. Tri-Valley seniors Rachel Adriaans, Sarah Schneyer, Hope Costa and Erin Smith. Rachel Adriaans leaps as she looks to control the ball. Seward's Sinead Brosnan moves ahead as she is marked by T-V's Colleen Jones, T-V's Mareena DiMilia sends the ball forward.Gladys Loyas sends in a corner kick. Vicky Tingley begins a run up the sideline as she is pursued by Seward's Allison Morgan. Danielle Stam works to move the ball between T-V's Kaitlynn Greffrath and Megan Tyndell, Gladys Loyas sends the ball by Sarah Coney and Seward's Cassi Martin and T-V's Kaitlynn Greffrath vie for a ball.
GRAHAMSVILLE, NY—“Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned,” goes the oft-quoted line.
Imagine then the pent-up rage of a dozen or more young females who have felt their honor compromised and beware of the revenge they vow to exact.
I’m referencing here the damaged egos of the S.S. Seward Lady Spartans from a stinging defeat the prior day to league rival Tuxedo. The resultant impact would fall first on guiltless Tri-Valley as the orange-clad whirlwind vowed to get the wind back in their sails for the coming “C” wars by playing their special brand of soccer with a renewed fervor.
Seward senior striker Danielle Stam scores the first of her three goals on the day as the ball veers by Erin Smith just over four minutes into the game.
For the immensely talented Lady Spartans of S.S. Seward, it wasn’t their first loss of the season, a 3-0 blanking to Class A Goshen on October 18 in the Middletown Tournament that got the girls from the storied program and their iconic coach Joe DiMattina in a tizzy.
Rather it was the stunning 5-3 league loss to Tuxedo on October 25 that turned the Orange Crush into the temporarily crushed orange.
To say that DiMattina and his girls were disappointed by the defeat which marred their up-to-then undefeated league record would be a ridiculous understatement.
In their two prior outings, the Lady Spartans had shut out the Lady Tornadoes to the tune of 4-0 in their first league set-to on October 11 and to the harmonious strains of 5-0 in the consolation game of the Middie Tourney.
They say it’s tough to beat a team three times in a season and that may be true. But when you come from a pedigree like Seward’s where success is far more the rule than the exception, such adages seem rather irrelevant as applied to a school that has won ten straight Section Nine girls soccer titles, seven of which have come since DiMattina’s arrival in 2004 from Tuxedo (no less).
Moreover, Seward has reached the state final four every year under his watch and won state championships in 2007 and 2008.
Tri-Valley's Collen Jones passes the ball to Rachel Adriaans in one of the instances that the Lady Bears were heeding Coach Mary Feusner's counsel to keep the passes short.
So what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.
Consequently, losing to Tuxedo may not be the worst thing for Seward, the Institute of impeccable consistency in the realm of athletic excellence, but rather an infusion of a jolting tonic that will get Seward right back on track. Time will tell.
Tri-Valley had the daunting task of trying to contain Seward, while attempting to author a viable attack that would put some pressure on the defending champs.
To get them the day after their loss to Tuxedo was an unfortunate case of bad timing if they wanted to reverse the tone of their prior 7-0 loss to Seward on September 19 down in the cornfield, the very place they are slated to play them as sectionals begin on October 29.
Having recently garnered a sectional berth by dint of their then 8-7 league mark with a win over Fallsburg, T-V locked up the bottom seed in the Class C dance and drew number-two Seward for the coming sectional opener.
Millbrook is the top seed, Seward’s opponent in the sectional finals the past two years. The Lady Spartans advanced to regional play by getting past the Lady Blazers with one-goal wins in 2009 and 2010.
This was senior day for Tri-Valley, playing its last home game of the season. Rachel Adriaans, Sarah Schneyer, Hope Costa and Erin Smith posed for a group shot before they and then all the other Lady Bears got to hand flowers to their loved ones. That took place at halftime and the girls were all smiles despite being down 5-0 to Seward at that juncture.
Intimidated perhaps by the aura surrounding Seward, T-V had spent far too much time watching rather than running to the ball. Its offensive runs were few and far between, and rarely sustained. Credit Seward’s fine defensive prowess sustained by its flat four back line defense for that ,and its fine passing skills that enabled them to reverse the polarity of the ball once they had wrested control of it mostly in the midfield.
When the Lady Bears did get a speedy run up the sideline by either Mareena DiMilia, Kaitlynn Greffrath or Rachel Adrianns, rarely was there someone positioned in the box to take the cross. To put it succinctly, Tri-Valley’s hesitancy was making it look easy for Seward despite the repeated admonitions of Coach Mary Feusner.
Gladys Loyas had two goals on the day, bringing this season's total to 34 as the leading scorer in Section Nine. Coupled with 60 goals amassed over the past three years, including 31 a year ago, 26 as a freshman and three as a defensive eighth grader, the talented potential Olympian is just six shy of the 100-goal career miletsone formerly reached by Lady Spartans Theresa Space and Jillian Collova.
Seward senior standout Danielle Stam and Elizabeth Gorshack immediately marshaled control of the ball in the T-V end.
At 4:30 in Stam sent one by T-V’s agile keeper Erin Smith on an assist from Gorshack.
Seward nearly had another goal on a corner kick from Gladys Loyas as Sinead Brosnan just missed a chance in the box.
At ten minutes in Stam struck again to make it 2-0.
At 19:10 in it was junior Alyssa McLaughlin’s turn as she scored off a jumble in front of the box following yet another Seward corner kick. Trailing 3-0 just about halfway through the first half, T-V tried to fight back.
Their physical intensity was there but they were missing that kind of aggressive edge they marshal against teams they know they can beat.
Smith had a nice save on a shot by Brosnan just past the 20-minute mark. By game’s end she’d tally 16.
“Where are we on the attack?” barked T-V Coach Mary Feusner. “We’re standing around and watching!”
Tri-Valley’s first viable run soon came about resulting in a shot by Sarah Coney. Heather Fraser hung on for the save.
Stam picked up her third goal on an assist from Loyas at 33:00 minutes in. It was her 22nd of the season. For her part, Loyas had five shots in the first half, none of which found their mark. She’d alter that in the second period.
Just one minute after Stam’s latest strike, Brosnan scored to make it five-zip.
That would be it for first half scoring as Seward had outgunned Tri-Valley 27-1 enroute to a 31-4 margin in shots on goal by game’s end.
Loyas got on the board at 28:24 of the second period on the first of two unassisted goals. Those two goals gave her 34 this season, which coupled with her 60 which she amassed over the past three season leaves her just six goals shy of the 100-goal milestone. She would be the third Lady Spartan to reach that storied achievement, following in the footsteps of Theresa Space (157 goals) and Jillian Collova (119 goals).
Loyas got three goals as a defensive eighth grader. As a striker during her freshman and sophomore years she amassed 26 and 31 respectively. She is now positioned as a midfielder.
Erin Smith sends the ball safely over the top of the cage in one of her 16 saves on the day.
Loyas is also running cross-country again this season. Last year she qualified for states with her fifth place finish in the Section Nine Class D championships.
Scoring two goals in Seward’s quarterfinal win over Friends Academy the day before the state race left her without a full tank in the gas for that event.
Last winter Loyas played basketball too, but soccer is clearly her forte.
This past summer she made the Olympic Development Program Regional Team which means that she has been identified as one of the 30 best players in the 13 Northeast states.
She will fly to California in February to compete for a spot to represent the USA. Only about 120 girls from across the country have been identified and invited.
She has also received D1 offers from St Bonaventure and Monmouth University to play soccer in college on an athletic scholarship.
In addition,, she is waiting on offers from American University, Manhattan College, West Point, University of Arkansas, Stony Brook University, Lafayette College and Hofstra, while talking to about a dozen others including Swarthmore and Amherst.
DiMattina responded to this writer’s assertion that the level of soccer his team plays is markedly above what I normally get to cover. “It is… as long as they do what they’re supposed to do,” he answered. “You saw that here today. They all know they didn’t play well yesterday and it definitely showed. I’m glad we got back into our rhythm here and never, ever, ever take anybody lightly.”
Seward plays a different array defensively. “Most teams do play with a sweeper but I play a flat four. The only reason why I do that is because I think the girls can do it. It all depends on the personnel. This year we have three new girls back there as senior Kari Ward is the only returnee to that backline array. We had to convert a midfielder back to defender and we brought up a player from J.V. It seems to be working pretty nicely. At times we do struggle because we’re still learning.”
As to the offensive firepower provided by Stam and Loyas, the coach observed, “People do try to mark them and that’s fine. Then we’ll just use the outside players. They are a very good one-two punch,” he said referencing Stam and Loyas.
With the expected pressure on those two, the rest of the team is very good at passing the ball away from them to relieve the pressure and then getting it back to them, something they didn’t do in the loss to Tuxedo.
“We kind of played a kickball game. I told the girls on the bus coming over here today if it’s not there, it’s not there. Use the outside forwards and then they’ll get it back eventually,” he noted. `
Sarah Coney authors T-V's most viable run in the first half.
Coach Feusner admitted that her team looked timid. “We told them you have to initiate the play. Instead they were sitting back and reacting to everything.
You can’t do that against a team like that. You’ve got to take control of the ball and that was not happening. We asked them to use the short passing game because the long pass just doesn’t go with their deep backs.
I kept reminding them, go back to the game plan..go back to the short passes,” she averred.
“We have to have our numbers up to do something but I think the girls are waiting for Mareena DiMilia or Rachel Adriaans to do something. They knew they would have to play defense today but sometimes they don’t understand how quickly they have to get into the transition to move on the attack.”
Erin played a wonderful game today,” she added noting that at times when trying to clear the ball, T-V passed it right to orange feet. Then it’s one touch and go for them.”
Feusner hopes she’ll be able to get her team’s psyche ready for a more competitive outing against Seward in the sectional game on October 29. “We’re going to practice getting to the ball, a mantra she repeated three times and we’re going to accentuate the short passing game. I’m not going to allow those long passes,” she vowed.
Goalie saves: S – Heather Fraser 4; TV – Erin Smith 16.
Records: Seward 14-2-0 (11-1-0 OCIAA); T-V 8-8-0 (4-8-0 OCIAA).
For an album of photos, visit www.sportsinsights.smugmug.com
