West Hempstead stuns Hewlett in OT

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West Hempstead had an outstanding regular season on the boys’ soccer pitch, including an eight-game stretch of seven wins and a draw. However, the Rams didn’t exactly steamroll into the Nassau Class A playoffs having suffered back-to-back 1-0 losses to close the Conference AB4 campaign.

They also trailed Hewlett by that same score at halftime of an outbracket matchup Oct. 23 before storming back to keep their season alive. Junior David Cadet scored the equalizer in the 44th minute and then played hero with the game-winning golden goal off a scramble in the box 2:57 into overtime as No. 11 West Hempstead eliminated the Bulldogs, 2-1.

“It’s an amazing feeling because last year we were near the bottom,” said Cadet, who scored 13 regular-season goals. “Nobody really expected us to have this kind of season and be where we are today. We believe in ourselves.”

Hewlett, the No. 22 seed which lost only two Conference A2 games (3-2-5), struck less than four minutes in thanks to a rocket of a shot off the foot of junior Carlos Aguilar from 30 yards out. The Bulldogs had several chances to increase their lead in the first half but couldn’t get anything else past Rams freshman goalkeeper Bryan Burgess, who finished with eight saves including a full-out diving stop in the eighth minute.

“It’s disappointing,” Hewlett coach Nick Lacetera said. “We had some similar games to this one where we started strong and couldn’t finish. The same thing happened in our last conference game against Carey last week. We just ran out of gas.”

Senior goalkeeper Laurent Dorviller made eight saves for the Bulldogs, who were led in the back by seniors Jonathan Miller and Liran Nagrani.

“We weathered the storm in the first 20 minutes when they were all over us,” West Hempstead coach Chris Van Kovics said. “We stuck to the blueprint, got the ball deep to the flag and used a lot of fresh bodies in the back to hold the fort down.”

Van Kovics lauded the defensive efforts of Mohammad Zkout, Luis Zavala, Danny Torrentes, Samuel Brioso, Kevin Decristoforo and George Meyer. “Everyone did their jobs,” Van Kovics said.

The Rams pulled even 2:08 into the second half when junior Jalen Jean sent a through ball into the box and Cadet beat a rushing Dorviller to the ball and drilled a left-footed shot from 15 yards out into the corner of the net to make it 1-1. Cadet almost netted the winner with just over a minute remaining in regulation but slid a similar-looking chance wide.

But the next time opportunity knocked, Cadet delivered and sent West Hempstead into a matchup with sixth-seeded Island Trees in the round of 16.

“The winning goal was a perfect example of what we like to do,” Van Kovics said. “We flooded the box with bodies and the next thing you know, the ball is in the back of the net.”