Westhampton Beach Avenges Last Year's County Semifinal Loss, Defeats Smithtown West in Biggest Victory of Season

The Westhampton Beach boys lacrosse team battled with Smithtown West last season, losing a pair of one-goal games to the Bulls, the second of which came in the Suffolk County Class B semifinals and the one that obviously stung the most.

The two teams met for first time since that late-May county playoff game on Thursday evening in Westhampton Beach, and while it is a new season with different squads facing one another, it was clear the game meant maybe just a little bit more to the ’Canes.

Thanks to a fourth-quarter explosion in which it outscored Smithtown West, 7-2, Westhampton Beach (4-3 in Division II, 5-4 overall, 101.58 power points) defeated the Bulls, 15-11, not only avenging last year’s playoff loss but possibly setting itself up to make this year’s postseason.

“It meant a lot after last year’s heartbreak,” senior defender Aidan McAuley said of the victory. “This gives us a big statement on what our future is with the team, whether or not we can playoff run or not. We’re going to make one now."

Coming off a tough 11-3 loss at Islip just two days prior, Westhampton Beach head coach Drew Peters said the importance of the game wasn’t lost on him, his coaching staff or his players.

“This was a little redemption for the guys last year that were in these positions, that weren’t able to get it done, that played their hearts out and lost two tight ones, and it was a little bit of playing for them,” he said. “We said this could be a program win — play for the guys that came before. We could definitely feel it in warmups there was a different feel with this group.”

Peters said he was looking for some consistency from his team and wanted to take things quarter by quarter. Although his team didn’t play all that bad through the first half, it was still trailing, 7-5, at the half. That’s when Peters told his players it was time to step up.

After Smithtown West scored the first two goals of the third quarter, the ’Canes mounted their comeback, starting with a goal from junior Heath Sumwalt with 3:19 left in the third. Senior Morgan McEntee added another goal 50 seconds later, then with time winding down, junior Will Drake scored right before the end of the quarter to make it a 9-8 game in favor of the Bulls, but clearly Westhampton Beach had all of the momentum and carried it over into the fourth.

The 'Canes tied the game four minutes into the final frame when Drake found Sumwalt for another goal, then with 6:09 remaining, McEntee found fellow senior JoJo Poerschke, who wound up a shot and scored to give Westhampton Beach its first lead of the game, 10-9. The Bulls came right back less than a minute later to tie the game right back up, but Poerschke found the back of the net once again off a feed from Drake and that started a string of five straight goals by the ’Canes to take over the game and seal the victory.

When all was said and done, McEntee finished with five goals and four assists, Sumwalt scored five goals and Drake added three goals and three assists. Charlie Beasley played an excellent second half in goal for Westhampton Beach and made 15 saves throughout the game.

“The atmosphere in the locker room was great today,” Sumwalt said. “It’s never been this good this season. And we did it for the boys last year.”

Nolan Michalowski is the Hurricanes’ faceoff specialist but he did more than just win in the circle on Thursday. He was flying all over the field, working both ends and making his presence known physically as well.

“We knew coming into this game it was going to be a battle,” he said. “We had something bigger to fight for with this game and I think we just came out, played our hearts out, played together. I think it's the best we played all year and it’s only up from here.”

When Smithtown West took a timeout with about 10 minutes remaining in the game, Peters told his players during the break that the rest of the game was going to be decided by effort.

“Flying around the field, getting ground balls, playing six-on-six offense, playing team defense, being able to clear the ball, and it’s going to be a team win and that’s exactly the way it came down to the end,” he said. “It was, to date, our best game played as this team, but we’re still looking for that consistency and hopefully we set it today and we can kind of come up and continue to play like this.

“Like I said, we’ve struggled putting together a whole game. We were able to do that today and this has got to be something that points in the right direction for us and I think it gives a lot of guys some confidence,” Peters continued. “We’ve been talking about finding ourselves this year — I think this might have been one of those games where we may have found ourselves a little bit.”