Boys Soccer Blanks East Haven and Ties Foran

Even though the Amity boys soccer team beat East Haven 7-0 and then tied Foran 2-2 last week, Coach Mike Marchitto was clearly displeased with the play of his 3-2-4 booters in both Southern Connecticut Conference inter-divisional contests.

“Sure, we beat East Haven 7-0 but I was really displeased with our poor play as a team,” Marchitto said.

After watching his starters not come close to playing up to his standards for the game’s first 20 minutes, Marchitto yanked eight of his 10 field players off the field and sent in his reserves.

He said, “No one could believe I told my reserves to warm up and then sent them onto the field. They ended up playing the rest of the game and did a nice job. I was really pleased to see how hard they worked. I hope this was a wake-up call for my starters. Their play was much too sloppy—both offensively and defensively. They came in too cocky and overconfident. I told them that they underestimated East Haven and added they haven’t yet earned the right to do that.”

With 29 minutes and 50 seconds gone in the game, Jeremy Conn gathered in a cross from Justyn Broderick and booted home Amity’s first goal. Colton Celotto headed John Sutton’s corner kick into the net at 31:43. Sam Stack’s unassisted score at 32:48 made it 3-0.

Aaron Cooper’s second half goal (with help from Conn at 46:37) extended Amity’s lead to 4-0. Alex Neumann (from Sam Dellert at 52:11), Sean Beaulieu (from Dellert at 60:04) and Kevin Russell (from

(Broderick at 68:29) added second half goals for the winners.

Amity outshot the Yellowjackets 24-4. Noah Safin made a pair of first half saves. He was replaced in the second half by Velere DeMelier, who also recorded two saves.

Marchitto added, “I did what I did because I wanted to impress it upon my starters that they had to work harder—much harder.”

The veteran Spartan mentor was very discouraged to see that his message from the East Haven game did not sink in when Amity played Foran later in the week.

“I guess my guys didn’t hear me, because once again we were very sloppy and didn’t work hard,” he said. “I told them Foran was a totally different team when they play at home and they would constantly pressure us. In order to counter that pressure, we’d have to move the ball quickly. Maybe, they didn’t believe me because Foran totally outplayed us offensively and defensively. They outhustled us the entire game. We were lucky to come out of that game with a tie.”

With 15 minutes gone in the game, a Lion defender accidentally kicked the ball into his own goal. That “own goal” gave Amity a 1-0 lead. The Lions tied the score with a goal from Chris Caicedo at 16:40. Zach Sabo added a score at 25 minutes to put the Lions ahead 2-1. Foran held onto that one-goal lead until Joe Guerra booted home a game-tying penalty kick with 4 minutes left to play.

Amity outshot the Lions 17-7 and Safian recorded 5 saves.

Marchitto added with touches of frustration and anger in his tone of voice, “Once again we were over-confident and just went through the motions. I don’t understand it. My guys just won’t believe me when I tell them they have no idea how good they could be if they played the game the right way. Since I’m the head coach, it’s my job to find a way to get them to play the best they can play every day. I have to figure out a way to reach them. Once I do reach them, we will be a very tough team to play against.”