O'Toole helps Whitman stun Sachem East

Seven years after they last made the playoffs and less than 24 hours since they won their outbracket game, Whitman shocked the Suffolk County soccer community.

Taylor O’Toole scored the game’s only goal off a cross from Alyssa Ballar with 6:30 remaining in the first half as No. 16 Whitman upset top-seeded Sachem East, 1-0, yesterday in the first round of the Class AA playoffs.

“You go in there as a 16 seed and you don’t expect to do that,” Whitman head coach Michael Maccia said. “The girls were pumped and jumping on each other. It was great.”

One team’s joy is another team’s agony.

“They were very disappointed because this is the end of a career for a lot of them,” Sachem East coach Ralph Forman said. “We had many opportunities we didn’t capitalize on. You have to convert the goals when you outshoot a team like that.”

Sachem East (14-3) outshot Whitman (9-5-2) 15-3 in the game and applied tremendous pressure in the second half but keeper Samantha Myers-Dineen finished with 15 saves to preserve the upset.  Whitman advances to play at No. 9 North Babylon at 2:30 p.m. on Wednesday.

“We came in figuring we had nothing to lose,” Moccia said. “I’ve been around long enough to know that on any given day the better team, no matter what the seed, doesn’t always win. You have to outwork teams and I think we just outworked them. “