Kennedy eliminated by Glen Cove

The Kennedy boys’ soccer team can't seem to solve Glen Cove in the playoffs.

The No. 4 Cougars (6-3-6 overall, 6-1-5 Conference AA1 East) were eliminated by the 12th-seeded Big Red in the postseason for the second straight year last Friday afternoon, this time by a 3-0 score in the quarterfinals of the Nassau County AA playoffs. Glen Cove carried a 1-0 lead into halftime before scoring twice more in the final 40 minutes to put the game away.

Glen Cove (7-5-5) squandered a two-goal lead to Kennedy in last season’s quarterfinal match before escaping with a 3-2 win in penalty kicks en route to the county title. The Big Red then stunned fifth-seeded Jericho in penalty kicks on Oct. 23.

Neither side mustered much offense through the first 20 minutes of the first half, but Glen Cove soon took advantage of a Cougar defensive breakdown which resulted in Jose Rumipamba scoring the first of his two goals. It was the Big Red’s first shot on goal in the game.

“It should've been avoided,” Kennedy coach Ari Bisk lamented. “We had an opportunity to make a clearance, we had numbers advantage in the box, and it got to their player because of an error. Give him credit for finishing. We were set up well but didn’t execute.”

Kennedy had several good scoring chances off Jaden Waldinger throw-ins early in the second half that weren’t converted, and Glen Cove took advantage when Enry Hernandez scored near the midway point of the second half to double the lead. Rumipamba further quashed any hopes of another Kennedy comeback with his second tally in the game’s final minutes.

“Those first 15 minutes of the second half, we were really relentless, and we just couldn’t finish,” Bisk said.

The Cougars, who led the conference with 32 goals this season, couldn’t get any of their eight shots on net past Glen Cove goalkeeper Bryan Hernandez. Kennedy freshman Gavin Herzog had six saves.

Kennedy won the conference championship and earned a first-round bye after a hotly contested race that saw the top three teams separated by just four points.

Waldinger (9-13-22) was named the Conference Player of the Year on top of his All-County honor, which he shared with Christian Maltes (7-2-9). Defenders Gavin Halper and Brandon Rabinowitz (4 goals) and center midfielder Jacob D’Arrigo (3-3-6) were All-County honorable mentions and defender Tyler Quezada, midfielders Dylan Cuttler and Connor Barath, and forward Max Broder were among the All-Conference selections.

But all those players, including others that contributed 29 of the team’s goals this fall, will be graduating next spring. Despite that, Bisk is still confident that his team’s competitiveness won’t wane.

“We’ll definitely have to find other creative ways to score other than relying on Jaden so much,” he said. “We do have one player, Eli Lowenstein, that got hurt in the first game in the season and this kid is so fast and he would have scored a ton of goals this year. There’s [also] a couple of talented kids that are coming up, so I expect us to be competitive.”