New-look Amityville 'ready to be the next wave' of champions
Amityville wins the Long Island Class A boys soccer championship between Amityville and Glen Cove at Mitchel Athletic Complex on Sunday. Credit: Peter Frutkoff
John Arango used the word “passion.” Oscar Medrano chose “hungry.” Jeffrey Hernandez opted for “committed.”
This is just a sampling of the vocabulary that the Amityville boys soccer players use when they talk about their program, one that has won five county and Long Island titles in the past eight years and entered this season as the defending state Class A champion.
“Wear our uniform and you feel like you’re a part of something special,” Norvin Martinez-Hernandez said.
The question that has followed Amityville into this season however is about whether it can stay special and capture a third straight Suffolk A crown. Seven starters and a total of nine members of the regular rotation from the 2022 team graduated and this year’s squad has heard the inevitable whispers that the departures have left it vulnerable.
“We hear it from our friends in [the] soccer [community] and we even hear it from our classmates,” Medrano, a center back, said. “People may believe that we can’t do what we did last year, but they don’t know what we’ve got.”
What they’ve got is something very different from a year ago but potentially as dangerous. The constellation of senior stars that included Newsday Player of the Year Roberth Perez (N.C. State), Hugo Rodriguez (LIU) and Matthew Katz (Queens) played alongside an unselfish collection of gifted players who took lesser roles for the sake of success. Those now move to the fore.
Norvin Martinez-Hernandez is potentially one of the most impactful. A backline player whose speed helped him ignite the Amityville transition last season, he is now an attacker and possibly the club’s biggest scoring threat. Arango, a center midfielder, becomes a main playmaker. Medrano and Hernandez take over running the defense. All four seniors are returning starters and Amityville coach Mike Abbondondolo said “they are ready to be the next wave.”
“That team had stars and this one is going to be about how well we work together,” Arango said. “That team had big, powerful guys. We are more technical . . . can play any style” and exploit whatever is an opponent’s weakness.
“Any one of our guys could be the dominant force on any day and so it will be hard for teams to focus on one guy,” Abbondondolo said. “We’re more spread out and have no big egos.
“I watch us and feel we’re already close to midseason form,” he added. “The group is more progressed at this stage than any Amityville team we’ve had. And from top-to-bottom they have a high [soccer] IQ and are receptive to instructions. They hear something once and they get it.”
There are threats around many corners for Amityville, including Class A runner-up Half Hollow Hills West, Kings Park, Shoreham-Wading River and Glenn. “And we know we’re going to get their best game," Hernandez said, “so we have to bring our best to every game.”
Some Amityville players will have to take on far more than a year ago because of the number of departures. Senior Hector Mejia will play in the middle of the front line but with more of a passer’s mentality than Perez’s finisher mindset. Senior goalkeeper Deshawn Cornie won’t see many shots if Medrano and Hernandez can help it, but the ones he does will be the best he’s tried to stop.
“I really want to see this group win as much as I have with any,” Abbondondolo said. “They are of one mind . . . [and] embody what the program has been the last decade. And I think they could be a culmination of all our successes.”
Roger Rubin returned to Newsday in 2018 to write about high schools, colleges and baseball following 20 years at the Daily News. A Baseball Hall of Fame voter since 2011, he has covered 13 MLB postseasons and 14 NCAA Final Fours.
