By PAUL GOTHAM
HILTON, N.Y. — Coming off a pair of 4-nil wins to start the season, the Hilton boys’ soccer team went into Friday night’s league matchup on an upward trajectory.
The Cadets used a three-goal second half to stay undefeated.
Mike Ellicott, though, didn’t want to focus on the end result after what the ninth-year head coach described as a slipping of the standard.
“We can’t come off the field happy with this,” Ellicott said after Hilton’s 4-1 win over Rush-Henrietta in Monroe County Division I action. “It’s great that we bounced back and we won at home, but there’s more to the game than the score. These boys are way more soccer savvy than that. They understand that. They know that.”
That reaction gives fans an understanding of what Ellicott expects from his gang-of-11 this season.
“We never got anything going in the first 40 minutes,” Ellicott said. “I’m willing to point out when we come across a team that stops us from doing things, but we didn’t get anything offensively. We just were really stagnant. We didn’t get our feet moving around. The ball movement was terrible.”
Kyle Cunningham converted on a corner kick for an early Hilton lead. Sam Sharma connected on the equalizer for the Royal Comets.
“It was a tough punch to take,” Ellicott said. “It was our first goal that we conceded. Our goalie feels terrible. Our backline feels terrible. We knew that was coming at some point.
“It was about a response. We had a decent response, but it just took too long for us to realize how to fix things. We can’t wait until halftime to make the adjustment. We need leaders on the field that will make the adjustments. There’s no time out in soccer, no commercial breaks. There wasn’t that moment to sort of huddle and refocus. We struggled with that.”
Johnny Bianchi redirected a Justin Kurtz cross less than eight minutes into the second half to give Hilton a lead it did not surrender. Six minutes later, Max Meagher added to the advantage when the senior back converted a penalty kick. Bianchi also connected from the 12-yard spot for the match’s final margin.
48’ Johnny Bianchi running far post gives @HiltonSoccer a 2-1 lead. pic.twitter.com/GU383XOzx4
— Paul Gotham (@PickinSplinters) September 9, 2023
“We know we still got work to do,” Bianchi said. “We had the space in the midfield especially, we just needed to take that and drive. We did a lot better in the second half of finding that open space.”
Thinking down the road, Ellicott wanted the sting to be more for his squad.
“If you’re in a moment in the sectional finals or a regional game, you can’t get into that funk of we just blew 40 minutes of the game where we didn’t execute what we needed to do. Now we’re chasing a game.
“That was the first bump in the road in conceding a goal. We responded to it. At the same time, it was like a little love tap instead of kick in the bum. I wanted them to have a kick in the bum because I want them to know what it’s like to face some adversity. We’ve seen that in the past.”
Hilton (3-0) will host Fairport (2-0-1) on Tuesday for a 7 PM kick off.
Rush-Henrietta (1-2-0) welcomes Webster Thomas (1-1-0) for a 5 PM start on Tuesday.
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