A year removed from winning the state championship and graduating most of their starters, it would not have been out of the ordinary for the Mattituck Tuckers to take a few steps back as the new crop of talent pushes its way to the varsity level.
Through nine games, however, it’s clear that this team has talent.
“We strive to reload rather than rebuild,” first-year Tuckers head coach Will Hayes said. “A lot of people wrote us off before this season.”
After Hayes took over the program following the retirement of Mat Litchhult, he knew that this team still had something left in the tank.
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A lot of these players were with me at the varsity level last year,” Hayes said. “They didn’t play a lot because we had so much exceptional ability but it didn’t mean they were bad players, they just needed to wait their turn.”
Among those players is Axel Rodriguez-Canel, who contributed an assist on Tim Schmidt’s goal in Thursday’s 3-0 victory over Babylon at Mattituck High School.The sophomore has scored 12 goals this season leading Mattituck to a 5-1 league record and 8-1 record overall.
Freshman goalie James Jacobs has also stepped up big time for theTuckers, playing aggressively and coming up with huge saves time after time
“Most of these kids were scrimmaging the best team in New York every single day,” Hayes said. “They were playing against players that are playing in college now and the pros. That rubs off on you.”
The sole loss this season was against Southampton (6-0 League VII, 9-0 overall) but Hayes believes they’re beatable.
“The goal is to make it to the County final and see what happens,” Hayes said. “If teams are going to give us latitude and expect us to be poor they’re going to pay for it and so far they have.”
As for Southampton, Hayes pointed out, “they still need to go through us. We’re still the state champions.”
SoutholdLOCAL photos by Michael Hejmej
