Thursday, May 22, 2025
Considering the 27 players who graduated from last year’s state championship team, Steve DiPietro is “pleasantly surprised” that the neophyte South Side boys’ lacrosse team won seven of its first nine games of the season.
But the Cyclones now are in the midst of what their coach considers midterms, which started with an 8-7 loss at Cold Spring Harbor last Friday and continues with upcoming matchups against Syosset and Wantagh, which could be a preview of the Nassau Class C championship game.
“They’re quality programs, both well-coached, and we have a long history of playing them every year. So those are good benchmarks to see where we’re at,” DiPietro said. “Even the Wantagh game, we kind of look at it as a first-round game. They’ll see us a little bit. We’ll see them a little bit, but our goal is to see them in the finals, and that’ll be the one that counts.”
The early season tests have been overwhelmingly positive, a 15-11 win over Yorktown and its Virginia-bound goalie Hunter Messatesta raised expectations.
“To be able to come out and score 15 goals in that game, I think really kind of opened our eyes a little bit to what we’re possibly capable of,” DiPietro said. “But we’ve been inconsistent at times as well. We knew that was going to be part of the process.”
That inconsistency was evident in a 6-4 loss to Farmingdale, where the Cyclones learned valuable lessons about decision-making in shot selection.
Leading the way offensively has been Luke Mullen. The sophomore has 32 goals and 10 assists on the season, with Cullen Lynch, who was a complementary piece on last year’s senior-laden side, has contributed 19 goals and nine assists as the second-leading scorer.
And Brendan Vetter, who tore his ACL in his freshman year, is an athletic distributor and initiator for the Cyclones on attack. The junior has nine goals and 12 assists.
Like last year’s team, these Cyclones are sharing the ball, evident from 62.1 percent of assisted goals.
“That was one of the themes last year, even with all the personalities and experience and talent that we had last year, one of the best things about it was that no one cared who scored, they were very unselfish with the ball,” DiPietro said.
“We kind of stressed that in the offseason with these guys that the more we share it and we’re not running through three guys, we’re not trying to make it about me and everybody gets opportunities, and so far they've been very good at that.”
Cole Schiefelbein and Jack DiSarlo have shared the cage, and both goaltenders have impressed.
And while Jack Mullin, who fractured his foot against Calhoun on April 11 and is out for the remainder of the season, is missed, there have been strong contributions on the defensive side.
Leading the charge there has been John Muscarella and John Kufta, while Mike Benfante, Colin Kenny have been steady and strong defensive midfielders.
“We always say our number is seven, we don’t want to give up more than that,” DiPietro said. “Outside of the [three] losses we had, I think we’ve done a pretty good job of that.”
