South Fork Boys Lacrosse Looks To Rebound After Tough Week

South Fork boys lacrosse head coach Matt Babb said his team never heads into a game expecting to lose, but rather acknowledging that certain ones will be a challenge.

Despite winning three in a row and four of its last five a few weeks ago, Babb and his players knew the meat of their schedule was coming up against Smithtown East, Middle Country and Ward Melville, and continuing this week against Sachem East and Northport.

“It’s up to us to rise to those challenges,” Babb said.

The Islanders didn’t get off to a good start to the part of the schedule that could decide whether the team makes the postseason or not. They lost, 16-4, at Smithtown East on April 25, suffered a 7-3 loss at Southampton High School on Thursday, April 27, then lost to Ward Melville, 14-6, at East Hampton High School on Saturday.

South Fork trailed Smithtown East, 7-1, at halftime of last week’s game and 12-2 after three quarters of play.

“For the Smithtown game, it’d be easy to make excuses such as our travel situation that day, or the players we were missing; which has been a usual occurrence this season,” Babb said. “But in reality, we didn’t play well at all.”

That carried over to the Middle Country game, Babb said. The loss was a bit of a headscratcher being that Middle Country was behind South Fork in the standings going into that game, and still remain behind in the standings even after a victory.

“We lacked overall hustle and had probably our worst shooting day of the season,” Babb said. “We hit the goalie, not so much him making saves, repeatedly, and were careless with the ball. This was probably the most difficult loss to date.”

Somewhat surprisingly, South Fork played its best game of the three against an undefeated Ward Melville team that has led the Division I standings all season long. The Islanders actually outscored the Patriots, 3-2, in the third quarter. East Hampton freshman James Corwin scored a goal and had three assists.

“I liked the way we competed with Ward Melville,” Babb said. “Although we still had our mistakes, we showed much improvement in our hustle and overall competitiveness. It’s the most spirit I’ve seen us play with and I hope it continues throughout the remainder of our games.

“We have a very talented team, and when we are at full strength, and play the way we are capable of, we feel we can compete with anybody.”

All is not lost, though. South Fork is still very much in the postseason picture, although it’ll need to start turning things around quickly with just four games remaining on the schedule. The Islanders, as of Tuesday morning, are 13th in Division I with a 5-5 record (6-6 overall, 91.73 power points). The top 10 in the division qualify for the Suffolk County Class A playoffs.

South Fork hosted Sachem East on Wednesday and will play at Northport this Saturday, May 6, at 2 p.m. It will play its last home game of the season at Southampton when it hosts William Floyd on Tuesday, May 9, at 4:30 p.m. before finishing up the regular season at Patchogue-Medford on May 11 at 5 p.m.

“We are going to focus on one game at a time, and if we play the way we know we can, then we’ll see how things work out for us in the end,” Babb said.