Two Drew Interest At Senior Game
Mario Olaya, the center midfielder on East Hampton High School’s boys soccer team and League VI’s player of the year, wound up a stellar four-year varsity career Saturday by scoring the winning goal in the exceptional senior Suffolk-Nassau all-star game played at Dowling College, the scene recently of East Hampton’s first-ever county championship.
Rich King, East Hampton’s head coach, who attended the all-star game, said that “it was a thrill to have two of our kids starting. Mario played the same position as he does for us, center midfield, and played magnificently. He played the whole game. Milton started at forward and was later moved back to outside midfielder, which isn’t his usual position, but that’s the way it is in these all-star games. He played well too, though he didn’t play the whole game.”
After Suffolk’s 2-1 win, King said that he, Olaya, and Farez talked with some college scouts. “I would guess there were from 15 to 30 scouts there, though it was hard to gauge. It was all very informal. We’re setting up recruiting trips now for Mario and Milton, and also for three other seniors — Jerjes Alban, Angel Garces, and Esteban Aguilar — who certainly were worthy insofar as the exceptional senior game was concerned, but who couldn’t play because schools are limited to no more than two representatives.”
In all, it had been “a banner season” for East Hampton boys soccer, said King, who was voted League VI’s coach of the year, an award he said he shares with his assistant, Don McGovern, Pierson’s former coach.
Bonac’s team, which defeated defending state champion Sayville 2-1 in the county title game, finished as the fifth-ranked Class A school in the state, “the highest ranking an East Hampton soccer team has ever had.” The team scored 58 goals during the course of the season, “the most ever scored by an East Hampton team in a single season,” and Olaya wound up as the school’s all-time career scorer with 49 goals. His 22 goals this fall puts him in third place all-time in the single season category, behind Jefferson Ramirez, with 29, and the late John Villaplana, with 27.
Both Olaya and Farez, who was named the county championship game’s most valuable player, have made the all-county team. Farez has also been named to the all-county academic team.
All-state announcements are to be made at the county dinner on Tuesday, King said.
Garces, Alban, and Jean Carlos Barrientos, another standout senior starter, were named to the all-conference team, and Aguilar, the senior goalie, was named to the all-league team.
Among the schools interested in Olaya, King said, are Dowling, C.W. Post, Molloy, the University of New Haven, Franklin Pierce, Keystone, and Plattsburgh State. The University of New Haven, Molloy, and Old Westbury are said to be interested in Farez. “Our other seniors have drawn interest from colleges with soccer programs as well,” said King.
As for next year, “we’ve got the potential to do what we did this year,” King said, “but we’re losing six senior starters. We’ll have holes to fill. Mario and Milton accounted for 37 goals and 20 assists all told. Twenty of the 26 kids on our roster this fall will be coming back, and our jayvee [coached by Steve Tseperkas] went undefeated in league play and was 13-2 over all.”
Neither he nor McGovern would enter any teams in off-season leagues, King said, “though some of them will be playing on club teams in weekend tournaments and indoors at Sportime. The next thing we’ll do as a team will be our annual 7-on-7 tournament here on March 4, with other East End teams like Westhampton, Hampton Bays, Southampton, Greenport, and Mattituck. There are plans for a number of them to attend a weeklong camp in the summer at UConn, in July or August. Meanwhile, we’ll try to get the kids who aren’t playing winter sports into the weight room — we’ve put a program together for them. We did this last winter too. . . . Absolutely it helped.”