Centereach Destroyed; Next Target Newfield!

After a huge win by the Smithtown East Football team (1-0) over rival Centereach (0-1), the focus has changed from celebration to preparation. The team knows that 1-0 is not good enough, and they want more. Tomorrow, Newfield (0-1) comes to our house and tries to get their first win and Smithtown East tries to go 2-0 for the first time in the schools re-opened history.

Now some people are very critical of Smithtown East saying that: the win was a fluke, or that Centereach is just bad. But the coaches and the players don't believe that. "It was very obvious that we were a better than Centereach," Coach Saladino said during an interview, "but this week [vs. Newfield] will tell us how the rest of the season will go."

Well how far are we going to go, are we even going to beat Newfield? Captain, and one of the players of the game, Bobby Whitmarsh knows we can win. "If we work hard in practice we should definitely win it," said Whitmarsh.

Coach Saladino could not agree more. "We definitely need to keep getting better by working hard in practice and focus on the task at hand. We have mostly senior starters and it is expected that they know their reads defensively and rules offensively. Now it is just a matter of how much they want to win."

That was no problem against Centereach. Smithtown East went out their and played like they had something to prove. Especially the player of the game, Tommy Freshour. Tommy had 9 touches for 133 yards and 1 touchdown (all together 300 total yards, 2 TD's). "Newfield is a beatable team," said Freshhour. "We are going to show the fans something."

Well he obviously showed the fans something last week because Tommy was voted to the top of the Smithtown East Male Fall Athlete Poll by his peers. An honor that is brand new at Smithtown East. "It's a great honor to be one of the top athletes for fall sports," said Tommy when I broke the news to him.

But the question still remains, what are our chances to beat Newfield? "Very good. They are a good team; not a great team. We need to learn from their offensive and defensive plays so we can be prepared the best we can. They have some good players that we need to keep in check and not let takeover the game. We need to play with the same intensity as last week, just without all the mental penalties."

After this week's practice I can personally say, "that's been squared away", and the team knows they can win.

As Pat Clancy says, "We are going to do as good as we know we're going to do."