Pickin' Splinters

Rochester's Independent Sports Source

Cavuoto, French carry Hilton past Victor

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By PAUL GOTHAM

HILTON, N.Y. — Cody Cavuoto ran down an Alec Smith diagonal feed along the right wing and used two touches to slide a pass across the six-yard box where teammate Finn French redirected the ball into the net.

The 79th minute tally carried a little more meaning to the Hilton boys’ soccer team than an insurance goal in a 3-nil win over Victor in Monroe County Division I action.

French’s marker, his second of the night, improved Hilton’s season total to 18 goals, already surpassing the Cadets’ output from a year ago.

“We’ve had a focus of beating our goals for last year,” Mike Ellicott said. “That has been our emphasis this whole pre-season. The start of the season has been about beating 17.”

Not that 2020 should serve as a gauge of any sorts with a ledger cut short by the pandemic and each week of the season bringing uncertainty. But this is a Hilton program that scored two goals per game on its way to the 2018 New York State Class Far West Regional Championship. Ending last season with a loss in the quarter-finals and managing a mere goal and a half per contest left Ellicott’s gang unfulfilled.

“It was weird year,” the seventh-year head coach said. “Yeah, we only played 11 games, but we only scored 17 goals. We’re going to generate way more opportunities. I feel like we’re a little more dynamic attacking.”

Hilton, which debuted earlier in the day at No. 14 in the New York State Sportswriters’ Association (NYSSWA) poll, improved to 4-0-0 on the season. The triumph over Victor (1-4-0) proved to be closer than the final score.

Sophomore John Bianchi found back of the net less than eight minutes into the match. That margin held for more than 50 minutes.

“We were a little disappointed at halftime that it was 1-nil,” Ellicott noted.

That can happen when division rivals meet. Especially when the players know one another as well as they do.

“So many of them play club together and they know each other inside and out,” Ellicott explained. “When you’re going up against your mate, you don’t want to give up an inch. It’s a real grind every single time that we play them. We want to fight for every inch. We lost in sectionals in overtime to them last year. So many drag down, kick it out matches to the very end, we knew they were going to hang in it.”

Bianchi’s second goal of the season was the difference until French capitalized on a set piece.

“Every time you play a Division I team it doesn’t matter who it is, just to get any more than two goals is an achievement,” Ellicott stated. “We’re very happy with that.”

Junior Ben Cronk made four saves for the shutout, Hilton’s second straight clean sheet.

“The boys take that more seriously,” Ellicott said of the shutout. “The first comment when the whistle went was ‘two in a row.’ It was nice to hear that. We want to put on a show and score goals, but at the same time we know that defensively sound soccer is going to win us games. We’re going to have our opportunities to score. If we can limit the other team, we’re going to be successful.”

Cronk’s counterpart, Connor Cronin, made it difficult for the Cadets throughout the match. Victor’s senior keeper thwarted Hilton on several occasions.

“He made some really strong saves,” Ellicott said of Cronin. “He’s a solid keeper. We’ve seen him before. We had seven or eight really clean chances tonight, though. There’s a lot of disappointment.”

Taking shots from difficult angles, Ellicott pointed to his squad contributing to its own frustrations.

“We didn’t make smart decisions in the box. We’ve had a real emphasis on being that fox in the box, the guy that finishes it off. The guy that doesn’t hand off the responsibility, but takes the responsibility of going to goal. Tonight, it was a little bit too much of that. There were opportunities to celebrate with your friend. It’s a team game.”

Cavuoto finished with three assists. The senior midfielder’s decision on the final goal was what Ellicott wanted to see.

“It was quite a fitting end that we saw the smartest decision of the night. Just give it to your friend and let him score. It was nice that we finished on that note because we got so frustrated trying to do it alone.”

Victor plays at McQuaid on Thursday.

Hilton hosts Irondequoit Wednesday night.

“To be four games in and we’ve scored 18 goals, now we have to realign that goal. To break that target so early, we don’t want to take our foot off the gas.”

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