Sayville Prepares for Playoffs with Scrimmage Against Hills West

The Sayville Golden Flashes finished the 2010 season 11-1 in League V play and 14-1 overall to clinch a No.1 seed for the playoffs. On Friday, the varsity boys soccer team got a taste of the stiff competition they will see in the playoffs when they scrimmaged with another No. 1 seed in Hills West.

Sayville allowed just two goals all season, but in Fridays scrimmage they allowed Hills West to more than double that in a 5-2 victory. Keepers Brian Lucha and Daniel Scheck saw more goals get by them in this game than they had all season in what head coach Val Winter viewed as great preparation for the playoffs.

"We can take a lot out of this game," Winter said. "We don't see this kind of speed really during the season so I hope we got a lot out of this. We can play with anybody, we've only had two goals scored on us all year in 16 games and this was good for us to get waxed here a little bit because it shows that you have to play hard every single second that you're out there."

While it was just a scrimmage with no referee's, both teams played hard and both benefitted from seeing each other in a game situation.

"We kind of drifted a little bit and lost our marks for a while so this was good," Winter said. "This was a result that we weren't surprised to see and were not disappointed in."

Sayville begins playoff competition on Thursday, Nov. 4 against Westhampton. Westhampton went 8-4-1 in League VI play this season (10-5-1) overall. Before its 1-0 loss to Shoreham-Wading River (8-4, 10-5) on Thursday, Westhampton had won three in a row to Mt. Sinai (1-12, 2-14), Bayport-Blue Point (3-9, 4-11-1) and Amityville (2-10, 2-11-1).

"I hope we come out hard and play like we've played all year and if we do that we'll be OK," Winter said.