Here is the final roster for the Empire State Games, which are scheduled to be held July 21-25 in the Buffalo. Enjoy that ride. Dave McNally is again coaching the squad.
Midfielder
Anthony Berardis (Mahopac)
Christian Bonaventura (Rye)
Timothy Curran (Croton Falls)
Edward Dedomenico (Rye)
T.J. Foley (Carmel)
Anthony Lombardo (Yorktown Hts.)
Kevin McNally (Hillburn)
Matt McReddie (Rye)
Attack
David Barton (Rye)
Robert Caffrey (Yorktown Hts.)
Kevin Carey (Mahopac)
Kieran Donohue (Katonah)
Defense
Maximilian Bonsall (Rye)
Michael Collins (Rye)
Matthew Landis (Pelham)
Brian Pickup (Rye)
Eddie Schurr (Lincolndale)
Kevin Schurr (Lincolndale)
Goalies
Michael Grace (Chester)
Cameron Stephens (Pound Ridge)
Alternates
Thomas Branca (Cross River) G
John Castellano (Scarsdale) A
Michael Bertoline (Cortlandt Manor) A
Kevin Christopher (Putnam Valley) M
Ryan Ferguson (Hawthorne) M
Connor Ferguson (Mamaroneck) LPM
Anthony Grasso (Bedford) D
John Horner (Bedford Hills) M
Nicholas Mariano (Mohegan Lake) A
Mark Paul (Blauvelt) D
34 Comments
T.J. Foley plays for mahopac, not Carmel
will the girl’s roster be posted soon? or at all?
How Did the Mariano kid not Make the 20 too play in Buffalo.Is it because he is a freshman,and he has 3yrs left.He played like a senior in allot of big games 4 Yorktown.Just Curious.
Laxinupsec1
For ESGs, kids are listed by hometowns.
Bottom line is the jj players want the easy way out that is why they play prime time. Empires is hard work 20 practices running sprints in the heat and playing on a big stage. JJ kids a rich spoiled brats that want to just go to a torny and play some scrub team and get recruited. I say they let down the entire hudson valley and the JJ community.
hey krod…i first read your comment hours ago and chose to ignore it. but i changed my mind.
in england they often complain that their best soccer players put “club before country” when choosing when and where to play.
i don’t know the JJ kids but i suspect they may have chosen “school over personal recruiting” in their decision as to where to play this summer. to think they took an easy way out is absurd.
just my opinion but please do remember they are just 17 year olds.
john
Unfortunately the cancellation of the ESG’s has hit lax hard. In the two years since, we’ve seen huge growth in travel summer teams, recruiting tournaments and camps. Most don’t draw college recruiters like the ESG’s did. Our top talent has been fragmented. It’s to bad, The ESG teams are no longer exceptional. The travel teams are no longer “elite” and the camps…well that’s just what they are. Looks like we’ve taken another step towards becoming a main stream sport.
Compare this team to 2008 team and the schools represented.Ytown,Jay ,Pac ,Rye ,L/P,Somers all top programs and we only brought home a bronze.Had to have at least past or present AAs on that team.
politics…. all this team ever is and ever will be is politics thats why the likes of jj kids L/P kids don’t tryout
because in 08 there was an AA who made alternate??? really how does this team work?? i find it odd that all of the coaches sons made the team.. but i guess thats just the perks of the job i mean suffern has a kid on it every year regardless of wether he has the skill.
7 ??!?
rye kids make the team ?!?!?!?!? yeah and not 1 putnam valley kid especially when there were 3 under classman who played a dominant role the whole season where are the y-town kids ???
if this ever want to be a serious team then let the kids know they’ll make it because they’re the best not because there dad is the coach
who is on the girls team will there roster be up soon?
Yikes… with all due respect, looks like this team is going to have a very difficult time up there. Hopefully they prove me wrong though. Does anyone know if the other regions have been hit by “aau/club” teams, the way HV has? Is this just the wave of the future in terms of recruiting/exposure?
Politics as usual. There really needs to be a new way to decide how to chose the team. By the way Putnam valley 09rs summer lax team, which is made up mostly of kids who graduated last year and haven’t played since then beat the empires team Wednesday night. Must really help having your daddy coach the team.
Actually, most (if not all) of the PV 09ers who graduated last year did play in college, and the Empire team is at best rising seniors. Still, the PV player overlooked by the HV Empires got a lot of satisfaction beating them. And one PV player is an alternate Empire. I’ll take all your word for it, though, that it’s politics.
kevin Christopher scores 5 on rye in first game and 2 i the finals and 7 rye kids make it over him. thats does not seem right. The PV 09 team was beating on empires pretty bad well see how the fair when the games.
I’m a Rye fan and have great respect for the PV team, coach and fans. So do the Rye kids. They know who beat them twice.
I thought Christopher would make the starting roster. If you think he or another kid should be on the team, fair enough to state that.
Obviously if he’s on the team, someone on the roster is off. But no need to be specific about which kid or “group” may have “wrongly” been put on the team.
The kids on the HV roster didn’t pick themselves, a group of coaches did. Stick to the coaches and system and away from the kids.
yes there a few good kids from some of the weaker schools but those kids are not able to deal with the like of long island so while they may be flashy and smooth it’s all looks no substance christopher is real deal scoring 3 points against manhasset!!!! but yeh thats only alternate material i guess kids from teams that didnt even make sectionals should be on the team to represent the all of section one middies should have been the 3 bronxville middies prunte chritopher, ocallahan from rye, those should have been the team and bonoventura or mcready
I heard Kennedy Lacrosse is getting 6 or 7 transfers in
The Team is politics at it’s best , the tryouts are a sham, there has got to be a better way in this day and age . It is to the point where some do not tryout … and waste their time , . If my son were still in H.S i would go with a club team
Everyone knows this is politics and always will be.. no suprise the Suffern coaches son gets all section and all county with 15 goals and 10 assists, every other player on that list smashes his numbers i dont care what kind of schedule they play.. oh and he makes the empire team to boot as a soph.. somethings wrong here
Its a complete joke and laughable to say this is the best HV has to offer. lets have a tryout in rockland and one in westchester and make sure we choose enough guys from both sides of the bridge and oh yeah pick players based on who knows what. Rye is a great program but not the best in the section to be represented by the most players. Another thing is that JJ players along with Ytown and L/P are the SMARTEST players…why you ask b/c why get hooked on politics and play for a team and waste a summer of recruiting where you will be playing with lesser talent b/c of all the corruption of the coaches. So they form there own elite teams stay together play throughout the summer together as a team and go to bigger recruiting showcase where they play against teams from LI and maryland. Smart move! The U17 prime time team would absolutly destroy the HV team. THeres No one to blame but maybe the coaches from rockland who thinks its unfair and have left out all section and AA picks on the team. Your an AA but not good enough to make empires…LOL what a joke!!!!! I predict HV loses and WONT MEDAL!!!!
Ardizone from TZ, long time ESG assistant, is not only a bad coach but very anti Westchester.
HV WONT MEDAL and Lax Observer
Why do you guys continue to whack the ESG team and its players and coaches? First off the coaches volunteer their time, they do not do the club thing and take fees as other coaches. Picking the team is very difficult. First off the tryouts are open to all players in the Hudson Valley region, the word is OPEN meaning anyone that can walk and carry a stick. All kids were invited back in March to tryout. I believe when the first practices were held there were over a 150 kids east of Hudson and maybe 75-85 west of the Hudson. That is 235 kids roughly. Now you take 235 kids and try to make cuts to 20 in a month, not easy. The coaches who did the evaluation came from the sidelines of section 1 minus Yorktown and L/P coaches. I am sure at the end of the day maybe there were 4 or 5 kids that got passed over but what they came out with was pretty much the best kids during the tryout process. Lax Observer, why make statements about a coach public like you said above. I think these blogs were not made for comments like that. I believe you should apologize on this blog and next time keep your negative comments to yourself.
There is only 1 rockland kid on the team and a kid from orange county. that makes 90% of the team from the other side of the river. I really don’t see any anti westchester bias.
Maybe he is a bad coach or not.But he has stepped up.if there r better than they should get involved.Good or bad coach he is there every day 4 the kids.
Lax Observer,
If you are going to rip someone it is easy to hide behind your computer and screen name. These coaches volunteer their time for what? Criticism from every Monday morning quarterback in the section? Give some credit where credit is due, or put your name on the board when you want rip the guy. By the way I played for Coach Ardizone in college. He was an assistant coach on an NCAA playoff team. I thought he was a damn good coach.
Oh please. So what if people volunteer their time? Don’t people who commit crimes “volunteer” their time? That means nothing. Let’s get people who can coach and know the game involved with ESG lax next year!
As parent of a kid who made it to the final rounds, this years process was flawed and not built to protect the kids section wide. The ownership of this falls on the person running the show, in this case the head coach. If he was really concerned about setting up a fair system that parents, others coaches and the kids could buy into then he shouldn’t have had fathers as assistants nor should he have had coaches picking between their own kids vs others with no coaches as evualators. If the head coach and the assistant coaches were truely confident their sons would have made the team based on their skill then they should have never signed up.
Next the coaches who huddled to make the picks after each round basically selected or pushed for their kids, when kids are close in talent or even slightly better then their own player they tend to go with their players as they must face the parents who know they were part of the selection committee. By in large the kids who had coaches as part of the process made this years team, with a only a few kids with no representation actually making this years team.
So what’s lesson my son learned from this, its not nessesarily your talent that gets you to make a team, its who know or who you are related too. Adults/coaches who push them to do the right thing don’t always do it themselves.
Recommendations for future HV ESG teams.. no parent should act as coach. Once you get to a managable number, top 50?, bring in a set of independant evaluators to recommend the players, then give the head coach 2 or 3 picks to set the final team. Without sometype of fair system I would never recommend that a parent put their kid through this process, unless of course you know your coach will be an evaluator thru to the last round.
I wasn’t going to write anything on this but was compelled after reading todays Journal news article on the boys Lax team.
The argument should be. Would those four kids ( No need to state names here ) have made this team if the father’s were not on the selection panel? Want to hear other’s thoughts??
The fact of the matter is that nepotism works. It’s how the world works. Its how the business world works. I’ts how politics works. ’ Is it fair – no – of course not. But it is reality.
The real hypocrisy is when people deny that it doesn’t exist. They think if they repeat the lie as load as they can and as frequently as they can that they can make the lie the truth.
That’s what bugs me. At least admit that the process is not fair, never was, and never will be. High school sports is no different than anything else in this culture. Connections work. Everyone knows it. Everyone works for connections, guards them, cherish them, and hide them. Then people boast that they got where there are through “hard work” and “skill” only. Of course to be a success there was hard work. Of course there is skill – which is mostly a mix of genetic traits that were inherited.
But you need connections too. ADMIT IT. Again I have no problems with using your connections. It’s reality. Just stop fricking lying about it. (laxit – thanks for telling the truth)
laxit,
Solid recommendations. Maybe bring in a college coach(s) or even CT coaches as independent evaluators?
ADK 7 HV 6 in game 1
LI 10 Western 4 in game 1
HV a little to late but good comeback attempt
According to the updates at laxlessons.com HV was down to adirondack 5-2 in the 3rd quarter.
A tryout process:
Tryouts are tough, flawed and human. Getting down to the top 50 isn’t hard, but reducing from there is.
Any tryout process and its air of transparency would benefit from compensating “tryout coaches” who do not have a stake in the outcome.They could be college coaches or from CT.
Then select down to two squads, the 25 best from the the north and the 25 best from the south. Let them compete for the final team. This would be emminently transparent, offer a new way to showcase many more kids, make it easy for kids to make the first level of tryouts, and force them to confront the rigors of high level competition where stakes are high.
As a followup, yes the head coaches should work with the judges or “tryout coaches” . No coach should need take the talent some unrelated “board” throws at them. Rather the process will be guided by the head coach.