Blue Devil Lacrosse Teams March into Playoffs

The Huntington boys’ and girls’ lacrosse teams have reached post-season play. The Blue Devil boys’ team will host Smithtown East in a quarterfinal round game on Saturday at 12 noon. Huntington’s girls’ team plays at William Floyd on Friday at 4 p.m.

The Blue Devil boys compiled an 11-3 record in league play and 11-4 overall. The team is seeded No. 4 with 175.860 power rating points, less than three behind No. 3 Northport. No. 5 Smithtown East is 10-4 is league games and 10-6 overall. Admission to the game is free.

Huntington is coached by Julian Watts, Andrew Gutierrez and George Powers. The winner of Saturday’s game will advance to the Suffolk Final Four on Wednesday, May 24 at the higher seed at 4 p.m. The county championship game is set for Tuesday, May 30 at Stony Brook University at 8 p.m.

The Blue Devils are looking to play hard for all 48 minutes. “The key is to not take any moments off,” goalie SammyMac Arner said.

Tom Girimonti said the road to success involves “just playing our game and working together.”

The Huntington boys finished the regular season in fourth place out of 20 teams in Suffolk Division I.

The Blue Devil girls’ team went 9-5 in league play and 10-6 overall. Huntington finished sixth out of 19 teams in Suffolk Division I. The squad accumulated 143.560 power rating points.

The Huntington girls’ are seeded No. 6. They will travel to No. 3 William Floyd for a 4 p.m. game on Friday. Admission is free to the game. The Blue Devils dropped a 7-6 verdict at William Floyd (12-2/12-4) on May 5.

“The key to playoff success is focus, desire and fine tuning,” said junior Kayleigh Bender, who leads Huntington with 40 goals and 26 assists. “Throughout this week our team has to focus on the details we didn’t execute to our full potential when he played William Floyd the first time. Once we work on these small but important details and show up with heart and grit on Friday, we can and will win.”

Huntington is coached by Katie Reilly, Christopher Taylor and Lauren Blackburn. The winner of Friday’s game will advance to the county semi-final round on Tuesday, May 23 at 4 p.m. The Suffolk championship game is set for Wednesday, May 31 at Stony Brook University at 5:30 p.m.

The key to playoff success? “Perfecting our stick skills and just working on fundamentals,” Devon St. John said.

Every player counts on the Blue Devil girls’ roster and Reilly, in her first year as head coach, has faith in all of them.

“The key to playoff success is making sure that we play as a team and also making sure that we have the same mentality,” Gianna Forte said. “In our win against Smithtown East, everybody went into it with such good vibes knowing that we could beat them and that is why we had the result that we did. In order for us to be successful in the playoffs we have to have the same mentality; that nobody is better than us.”