Thursday, October 1, 2026
The difference between first and seventh place in Nassau Conference AA-III boys’ soccer wasn’t as great as the standings indicated the morning of Oct 6. Two days after snapping a five-game slide, Long Beach battled from behind twice to earn a hard-fought 2-2 tie at Elmont.
Junior Andrew Judge tapped in a loose ball from the crease off a corner kick from senior Dylan Palacio with a little more than three minutes remaining to give the Marines (2-5-1) a well-earned point. They trailed by a goal at halftime, but sophomore Manny Flory’s header tied it 1:45 into the second half.
“It feels like we won,” Long Beach coach Leo Palacio said. “On the road against the first-place team, we’ll take it. We came back twice and were close to scoring a third time. We’ve been dealing with so many injuries, but we’re starting to get healthy and now we’ve got a win and a tie in our last two games.”
One of the banged-up Marines, senior goalkeeper Nicholas Alfonso, returned between the pipes after a three-game absence due to a head injury and made four saves. He was beaten on a first-half floater by junior Esosa Aluyi after leaving the crease, and by Nassau’s leading goal scorer, sophomore Benji Alonge, as the Spartans (5-1-2) took a 2-1 lead with 15 minutes left in the second half.
“We’ve been playing good, aggressive soccer and just had a huge win against Carey,” Elmont coach Pat Corvetti said. “Today was frustrating. It’s a game we let get away. We may have taken them lightly, but Long Beach is a well-coached team and deserves credit. Look at the way they celebrated.”
