Mike Andre, Mike Stanco score to help put Syosset in Nassau AA final
For Syosset’s boys soccer team, the Mike & Mike Show was on the air Friday night. On the ground, too.
Mike Andre banged home a rebound in the 21st minute and Mike Stanco converted a cross in the 42nd minute as No. 1 Syosset defeated No. 4 Long Beach, 2-0, in a Nassau AA semifinal at Hofstra.
“The engines of Mike and Mike don’t stop,” Syosset coach Brett Waxer said. “They’re always around the ball.”
The Braves (12-1-3) will play No. 2 Uniondale in the Nassau AA championship game on Wednesday at 8 p.m. at Hofstra. Long Beach, which hasn’t won much the last few seasons, finished at 9-3-1.
Andre finished off a nice sequence midway through the first half when Sal Inglima broke free down the left side and delivered a centering pass to C.J. Emmerich in the box. Emmerich hit a rocket that was saved by Marc Reilly, but Andre hustled in for the rebound and tapped it in.
“He doesn’t have many goals,” Waxer said of Andre, who scored only his second of the season. “But he creates opportunities and he got us going tonight.”
Stanco kept it going early in the second half when he cut down the middle and took a pass from Zyde Nawabi in front for his fourth goal. Stanco nearly scored again with under four minutes left when his chip shot over the goalkeeper hit off the left post.
“I’m always buzzing,” said the energetic Stanco, who credited Nawabi with “a perfect pass. It’s a play we work on every day at the end of practice. It was just the way we practiced it and I had an easy finish.”
The hard part of the game for Syosset was contending with fleet, shifty Long Beach forward Dillon Woods who is among the county’s leading scorers with 15 goals and had a couple of decent chances against Syosset. “We had a game plan to contain him because he’s an extremely dangerous player,” Waxer said. “My back four did a great job.”
One of those defenders was Eli Grossman, who called Woods, “One of the top kids in the county, with lightning speed. We always had a man on him. I was like a free safety. If he got open, I closed him down.”