Mattituck boys soccer season comes to heartbreaking end

This one hurt. It really, really hurt.

Despite outplaying top-seeded Center Moriches for most of the second half and overtime, a somber Mattituck team walked off the Red Devils’ field stunned after it was eliminated from the Suffolk County Class B boys soccer tournament on Wednesday night.

Tears were shed and players hugged teammates to console them after the fourth-seeded Tuckers lost the penalty-kick tiebreaker, 4-2, after playing to a 1-1 draw through 110 minutes in an epic confrontation.

The Tuckers (7-7-3) called it their best game of the season.

“I’m proud of my team and how far we’ve come,” junior goalkeeper Cris Cuellar said. “Not the result we all wanted. Happy to be a part of them.”

In some ways, the game was a microcosm of the season.

“We played pretty hard,” said junior forward Andy Mancia, who scored Mattituck’s goal. “We never gave up every time, 110 percent every time we had a game, we would go hard. We’ll never put our heads down. We kept going.”

Senior midfielder Anthony Soto added that he, “Really hoped that we’d win. We feel losing [by] penalties, our school’s cursed. I’m still a bit shocked that it’s all over. It’s my last season.”

Head coach Danny O’Sullivan summed it up well.

“Devastated for these guys,” he said.

“Losing two starters in the last couple of weeks of the season, two seniors, two key pieces that had played every minute of every game. We had a game plan. We executed it to perfection. We asked that anybody that came on the field give us everything they had, and that’s what they did.”

He was referring to defender Jackson Case (torn meniscus) and forward-midfielder Corey Dickerson (quadriceps). They watched from the sidelines as Mattituck started a young lineup with only three seniors.

After 80 minutes of regulation and two 15-minute sudden-death overtime periods, penalty kicks decided matters.

Alex Rotunda, Marquise Miles, Jason Lynch and Zack Rotunda, who struck the game-winner on the fifth try into the lower right side of the net, converted theirs. Cuellar saved Lenin Lituma’s attempt.

Mattituck’s Cuellar and Mancia put theirs away. Junior defender Dylan Palencia hit the left post and junior midfielder Franklyn Secaida sent his attempt over the crossbar.

Center Moriches faces second-seeded Babylon at Southampton H.S. on Saturday at 1:30 p.m.

This game lived up to its hype and expectations in a storied 90-year-old rivalry. It was intense, laced with drama and some twists and turns.

Center Moriches controlled the first half and scored a deserved goal by Ethan Chernis, off a Quinn Davidson assist, at 26:32 after the hosts stretched the Tuckers’ defense.

The turning point came at 49:41 when Alex Rotunda booted his PK over the bar after Luke Rebore-Costanzo was fouled in the box.

“I turned to our coaches, and I said, ‘He’s too amped up. He’s going to hit it over,” And he did,” O’Sullivan said.

Given a lifeline, the Tuckers dominated the rest of the half.

They thought they had tied it at 56:57 as Cuellar drilled one of his patented 50-yard free kicks that goalie Hunter Bernhard (seven saves) snared at the right post. Mattituck coaches thought that Bernard brought the ball over the goal line. Game officials ruled otherwise.

Undeterred, the Tuckers equalized at 1-1 as Mancia buried Soto’s feed at 59:51.

“Just crossed it into the middle,” Soto said. I don’t really look. I hoped someone’s there. Luckily, Andy was there, and he finished it.”

Cuellar (nine saves) was involved in a dangerous situation when Rebore-Costanzo collided with him in the penalty area in the first OT.

“The ball bounced in my area,” Cuellar said. “I came out. Number four hits my knee. The crowd was saying it was a foul. Never going to be a foul. He came and hit me.”

The Center Moriches senior forward was helped off the field and sat out the rest of the match.

For the first time this season, O’Sullivan deployed a back three and senior Christian Kretschmer and juniors Palencia and Secaida were flawless, as they did an excellent job of bottling up Center Moriches’ top scorers, Marquise Miles and Rebore-Costanzo (12 goals each).

“Everybody had a pivotal role today and executed well,” O’Sullivan said.

After a strong 7-0-2 start, the Tuckers finished with an eight-game winless streak (0-6-2).

“The finish tonight is everything I could have ever asked for as a coach,” O’Sullivan said. “Coming into the season, we had high expectations. These guys did everything we asked. Once we got into the B schools, we knew it was going to be a battle. It was going to be tough and physical. We didn’t get the results we wanted. One was a double overtime loss. One was a loss with 12 seconds left. We played and it got us battle-tested. I knew that coming into today, we would have a little bit more in us just to be motivated.”