Glen Cove falls to top rivals

The Glen Cove Big Red boys’ lacrosse team lost 16-6 under the lights at Big Red Stadium to south shore foe Mepham on Tuesday evening. This loss marked Glen Cove’s fourth straight conference setback and brought its conference record to 3-6.

Prior to the four-game skid, though, they had a winning conference record at 3-2.

“We’ve been trading wins for losses all year until we ran into the top three seeds in our conference,” said coach Steve Tripp. “Roslyn, Jericho and Mepham were the top three seeds for a reason: They are very good.”

The skid started with a game on the road at New Hyde Park. The Gladiators’ Kevin Langan had three goals and two assists as the game’s scoring leader. Eight New Hyde Park players recorded at least a point.

Then, the Big Red dropped the two aforementioned games to Roslyn and Jericho by scores of 11-5 and 12-5 respectively. Tripp believes that the losses are coming from offensive inefficiency and inconsistency.

“The offense is struggling,” Tripp said. “We are not producing many goals and we’ve been unable to fully hold teams down when we are struggling offensively.”

There is good news to be had for the team’s recent offensive struggles, though. Glen Cove’s leading goal scorer Mayan Letellier has been stellar and has added new wrinkles to his game midseason. “He’s been starting to feed as well as shoot recently,” Tripp said. “He’s been playing very well. He’s seeing that he doesn’t have to take every shot to try and carry the team when he has the ball. He realized he could pass and do just as well.”

Although Peter Rodriguez and Thomas Klimaszewski have combined for double-digit goals this season, Tripp would like to see a bit more evolution from the duos types of looks. “Scoring opportunities come to you, you take them,” Tripp said. “But you can’t take them when they’re not there. That goes for everyone, really.”

Felipe De La Fuente was one player Tripp pointed out in our season preview that he believed would be important to the season as a whole. “De La Fuente has been doing all the dirty stuff for us,” Tripp said. “He gets ground balls, he clears the ball, and although he hasn’t scored as much as we’ve wanted him to, he starts a lot of the offense.”

Tripp suggests that one cannot simply judge players off of statistics, and De La Fuente has proven that this year. “He’s been a good plater but not everything directly correlates to the stat sheet,” Tripp said.

Defensively, Glen Cove has been fairly solid throughout the year. “The other teams are mostly scoring in unsettled situations,” Tripp said. “When we are settled, we are doing very well.”

The Big Red have four games left on the schedule (Great Neck North, Herricks, Elmont), including a suspended contest against Roosevelt in which Glen Cove scored early before rain and severe weather interjected.

When asked what Tripp hoped for in the Big Reds road matchup with GNN this Friday, he chuckled and said, “Hopefully everyone sees what we saw tonight: the away team piling on goals and winning on the road.”