It looked for a while in Monday’s do-or-die high school boys soccer game here with Hauppauge that Don McGovern’s team, which needed either a tie or a win to get into the playoffs, would not make it.
The last time East Hampton and Hauppauge played, on Sept. 23, the Eagles, a team that likes to put the ball up in the air and crash the goal mouth on set plays, won 2-0. With 16 minutes left in Monday’s game, the visitors were up 3-1 — thanks to a flukey goal following a free kick, a high, sun-limned bouncer that Randy Japa, East Hampton’s goalie, mistimed — leading some Bonac fans to think the Bonackers would, despite their superior ball-handling skills, lose once again to a kick-and-chase opponent.
But not this time. East Hampton came back in thrilling fashion. Two electrifying goals by Juan Salcedo, in the 73rd minute and in the 75th, the second the result of a resounding header that redirected a right-to-left head-high cross, tied the score at 3-3, and prompted wild celebrating on the part of the Bonackers and their partisans.
Hauppauge was awarded back-to-back corner kicks in the final seconds of regulation, but nothing came of them. A free kick, with five seconds remaining, clanged off the football goal post’s crossbar.
The sun was low on the horizon when the first 10-minute overtime period began, shading the field, though the Bonackers continued to play animatedly, while the Eagles continued to play desperately.
And then, with 1:36 left in the O.T., Bryan Pilco, who came up from the junior varsity midway through the season, and who rarely scores, blasted a shot from the top of the box that beat Hauppauge’s diving goalie to the lower right corner of the cage. It was a stunning goal that capped a rousing comeback 4-3 win, clinched a playoff berth for this worthy team, and caused Pilco to disappear within a scrum of exultant teammates as Hauppauge’s bereft keeper lay prostrate on the turf.
All McGovern could say in the frenzied aftermath was “Wow!”
The coach added later that the county Class AA seedings would probably come out on Friday, and that “we’ll play an away game on Saturday.”
