Seaford seeks more postseason magic

The Seaford girls’ soccer team is looking to build off of a historic championship run in a more challenging conference.

The Vikings captured the program’s first county and Long Island titles last fall while competing in Class B due to a drop in enrollment. For this season, Seaford moved up to Conference A1 and will face far more hurdles if it wants to again hoist a trophy.

“We're in a totally different ball game this year back into the A's,” ninth-year Seaford coach Ken Botti said. “Even though I returned nearly my entire team there's a massive adjustment for us. And we're making them, but it's incremental.”

Seaford (5-1-3 overall) entered the week at 2-1-3 in conference play and third place in the league standings behind Wantagh and Plainedge. All six teams in the conference are guaranteed spots in the upcoming eight-team Class A playoffs.

The Vikings earned their first conference win on Oct. 4 with a 2-0 victory at Lynbrook that featured a goal apiece by Amanda Williamson and Meghan Stovall. The momentum continued last Friday with a 2-0 win at North Shore that featured goals from Kaylie Conklin and Linda Donovan. 

The back-to-back shutouts last week gives Seaford six clean sheets on the season in nine games. The defense features center backs Mia Leggio and Arianna Garcia along with Williamson and Kiera Lukas as marking backs. Junior goalkeeper Joanna Bello has anchored the backline in net and recorded nine saves in the North Shore triumph.

“She is playing lights out right now,” said Botti of Bello, who came up big in last year’s Long Island Class B finals with eight saves in the Vikings’ 1-0 overtime win against Babylon. “She is playing phenomenal mature soccer.”

The offense has been paced by strikers Riley Froese and Conklin up top along with Stovall, Donovan, Cameron Calderaro and eighth-grader Grace Cullingford in the midfield. Seaford lost sophomore midfielder Ally Cullingford, older sister of Grace, to an injury over the summer after she recorded eight goals and two assists during the Vikings’ postseason run last year.

The Vikings will next visit Friends Academy on Wednesday at 5:30 p.m. before traveling to nearby Plainedge for a 10 a.m. kickoff Saturday. The slow start to league play likely means winning the conference is out of reach, but Botti is hoping the team is poised to play its best soccer when it matters most. 

“At this point because we had some early season struggles the conference championship is probably not attainable, but we're just trying to gear up for a playoff run and get the offense firing and trying to peak at the right time,” Botti said. “If we could simplify the game and play a little bit of a smarter, more possession based game I think that's going to bode well for us and hopefully create more opportunities to ultimately be a more dangerous team.”