Angelina Price is right at home on Shoreham-Wading River boys lacrosse team

Angelina Price had just arrived after school at the Smithtown East field for a session with her lacrosse goalie trainer, Steve Costello. She was a second-grader then and she was a mess. She had dipped into the Cheetos on the way with her dad and the evidence was all over her face.

So she heard these words from Costello: “Angelina’s too long. ‘Cheeto' it is.”

A nickname was born. It has stuck to this day, and this day is when she’s near the tail end of her junior year at Shoreham-Wading River.

“You can’t really yell ‘Angelina’ across the lacrosse field,” she said. “ ‘Angeli’ . . . it doesn’t really work.

“Anything with sports, I’m ‘Cheeto.’ ”

Little “Cheeto” grew up to be a very good goalie, including in travel lacrosse, so good that she committed after her sophomore year to play for the Division I Navy women’s team.

But this 17-year-old daughter of a former Marine doesn’t play on the SWR varsity girls team. Price is the second-string goalie behind D-I bound senior starter Jaden Galfano on the varsity boys team.

“Her preference is to play with the boys,” SWR boys lacrosse coach Mike Taylor said.

So she has been on their side these last three seasons.

“It’s just really the team,” Price said. “These are my teammates, and they treat me very well.

“Also, it’s great for outside shots in girls [travel] lacrosse. In girls lacrosse, they’re shooting a lot more outside shots. It doesn’t compare to the shots I get here. I get a Duke commit, a Hopkins commit, all these great lacrosse players, shooting these really fast outside shots on me.

“And so when I go play girls lacrosse, it’s like night and day, and it does make it significantly easier to make the stops.”

Price, who stands at 5-8, started a game and appeared in several others last season when the Wildcats were en route to the Suffolk Class C title.

Now they’re taking a 10-6 record into this postseason. Price played in 11 of the games as a reserve. Twice she played the last three quarters, but she played mostly in the third and fourth when a game was in hand.

She allowed just seven goals and totaled 19 saves, including six stops in a 15-6 win over Mount Sinai.

“I’ll do anything to make a save,” Price said.

Ask Taylor about her and you will hear that she belongs.

“She’s right there with my starter,” Taylor said. “. . . She’s a competitor. She’s not just a girl on a varsity team. She is a goalie on a varsity team.

“She’s probably a top-five rated goalie in the nation at her age for girls. Do I think she could make a huge impact on [the] girls [team]? Yes. She’s made a huge impact on boys.”

Taylor said it was an administration decision to allow it, and that if the person can compete, “that’s fine.”

“I think she has all the intangibles,” Taylor said. “She sees the ball well. She communicates well. She’s definitely not afraid of the ball . . . There’s nothing she can’t do. She doesn’t have any weaknesses.”

Ask Galfano about her and you will hear respect.

“I like how she challenges herself and I like how she challenges other people, including me,” Galfano said. “. . . Every day, we’re just getting each other better.”

The Fairfield commit and third-year starter said he’s most impressed with “just the courage she has being between the pipes. Obviously, girls lacrosse is a very different game than boys lacrosse. Yeah, the courage and bravery that she has.”

You will also hear about acceptance.

“We treat her like one of us, as weird as it may seem to be having a girl [on the team],” Galfano said.

This goalie story started before Angelina had even become “Cheeto.”

“I played my first game in kindergarten, and the reason why I liked it was because I made the save and we won the game,” Price said. “We were tied, I think. I got to lead the line where you say, ‘Good game.’ Kindergarten me thought that was really awesome.”

Price, who moved from Bayport to Wading River before her freshman year, did play in the field as a long pole defender in the PAL. She has also played goalie with the Team 91 boys travel program and the Legacy girls and boys travel programs. She came to like the adrenaline rush from making a save and embrace the stress management needed to handle the position.

She began to embrace Navy after going to its prospect camp in Annapolis, Maryland, in the summer prior to entering high school. Price loved the coaches and the atmosphere. She returned for another camp there the following January and felt accepted by the Navy players.

She was sold. Navy also saw her play in travel lacrosse and recruited her.

Her choice was steeped in red, white and blue, too.

“I want to serve my country, so that was obviously a factor,” Price said. “. . . It’s almost like you feel a calling.”

But before she heads to the Naval Academy and then possibly the Marines, she’s in line for a promotion.

Taylor said this girl is currently slated to be the starting goalie for this boys team next season.

“I work hard every day, so it would be nice to finally get something out of it,” Price said. “We’re losing a lot of players, so I look forward to being an older person on the team, being able to be a leader, kind of show the younger guys what we’ve got to do.”

“Cheeto” has cleaned up well.