Sports

Boys travel to Italy for soccer tourney

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A group of nine Long Island teenagers, including a Lynbrook resident, traveled to Italy earlier in March to compete against professional soccer teams from Russia and Italy as part of the Carnevale di via Reggio tournament held in Viareggio, Italy.

The team, known Ligua Italian Americano Calico, which translates as the “Italian American Soccer League,” was comprised of 22 athletes from across the tri-state area, ages 16 to 19. At the tournament in Italy, the squad of teenaged amateurs faced off against professional athletes from across Europe. Robert Anastasio, a Lynbrook high school graduate, was one of nine players from Long Island on the team, and said the experience was one he would remember for a lifetime.

“It was a thrill to be out there,” Anastasio said. “To get a chance to get out there and play against professional competition on a stage like that was incredible…I learned a lot from playing against them and I really loved it.”

The squad was culled from a group of over 200 soccer players from around in a try-out held in the summer of 2014. They practiced together for just six months, learning each other’s strengths, weakness and play styles.

“Its definitely tough to try to get familiar with everyone that quickly, especially since the teams we were facing had played together for years in most cases,” Anastasio explained. “You really have to spend a lot of time on the practice field as a unit and learn each other’s personalities and learn how everyone plays the game. It’s not just on the field, either, you have to learn to work well as a unit off the field as well.”

In preparation for the international tournament, the team even practiced everyday in the month of January, despite cold and snowy conditions. Anastasio said that while the frigid atmosphere made for long, grueling days on the pitch, it was a key element in bringing the team together.

“It was really really cold,” he said. “The field was hard and frozen and the practices were tough but you have to work through those things for the good of the team. We knew the tournament was coming up soon, and we didn’t really have the choice to let the cold get to us…It really did bring the team closer as a whole though, because we were dealing with all that and fighting through it together, it was a real bonding experience for us.”

The squad played three games in the tournament, falling by just one goal in each. In the tournament’s opening contest, they managed to score their lone goal of the tournament, falling to a professional team from Uzbeketsted, Russia by a final score of 2-1. They fell 1-0 to Italian teams in their final games, first to Verona and then to Napoli.

Anastasio said that while he and his teammates certainly wanted for a better result, they were proud of their performance on the pitch, and even more proud of the way the team stuck together, despite their short time together and the unfavorable final scores.

“It certainly wasn’t the outcome we had hoped for, but we were proud of the way we played. We only lost each game by one goal against professional competition, so it felt like we could have one any of the three,” he said. “What was important to me and important to the team was that no one ever fell apart, no matter what happened. No one was getting all over each other, there was not finger pointing. We really had each others’ back and played like a team.”