Blanco Blasts Westhampton Beach's Game-Winner In Sixth OT For Historic Long Island Championship Title

For Isabella Blanco, making the game-winning shot in a championship lacrosse game was more than she could have ever dreamed of. Or was it?

“I actually have been manifesting this all season,” the Westhampton Beach junior defender said, laughing, smiling and crying all at once. “I had a dream that I was going to score a huge game-winning goal.”

On Sunday, Blanco proved dreams really do come true. In the sixth overtime session, with the game tied at 5-all, the junior raced downfield with the ball and drew a foul for a free position. Off the whistle, as three defenders raced toward her, the junior slid left, bringing the goalie with her, and shot straight up the middle with 53.9 seconds left to turn that dream into reality. The sudden-death goal for a 6-5 victory over Nassau County’s Garden City earned Westhampton Beach its first Long Island championship title in program history. The Hurricanes advance to face Section II’s Queensbury in the state semifinals at SUNY Cortland on Friday at 11 a.m.

“This is so surreal right now,” Blanco said, her teammates swarming her to get their appreciative hugs in. “That was my first goal of the season, and it will probably be my last, but I’m OK with that.”

And it comes just over a week after the Hurricanes claimed their first Suffolk County Class B crown with a 6-5 victory over Comsewogue in double overtime. Westhampton Beach also edged West Babylon, 6-5, to make it to the finals.

“We kept on digging,” Blanco said. “This team — the whole entire season — has been pushing, and we clawed our way to this victory. One-thousand percent, we earned it.”

Her goal followed one of freshman goalkeeper Maya Farnan’s eight incredible saves. She’d made the last one 40 seconds into the final three-minute overtime session. Senior defender Mia Failla scooped up a ground ball a minute later before dishing it off to Blanco. Farnan had made two saves during overtime to keep the Hurricanes’ hopes alive.

“I just had to do it for my team. I had to do it for my team,” Farnan said. “You have to do it not just for yourself, but everyone around you.”

Each step of the way the Westhampton Beach girls have proven they are part of a total team. It was evident on the stat sheet, too.

Down, 4-2, a little over midway through the second half, the Hurricanes strung together three straight goals, with all six scored coming from different players. Eighth-grader attack Ava Derby found the back of the netting on a diving shot to make it a one-goal game with 12:27 to go, senior attack Lily Berchin knotted things up by bouncing in her free position shot just over a minute later and freshman midfielder Reese King scored the go-ahead with a shot to the upper left corner at the 7:13 mark. Garden City’s Kristen Hegarty tied the game with 1:18 left in regulation.

In the second overtime, junior midfielder and defender Reilly Mahon bounced in what would have been the game-winning goal, but it was waved off due to a crease violation. She had another attempt saved in the third overtime session.

“My stomach dropped when the ref signaled no goal,” she said, adding she was already getting emotional speaking about the win. “But we keep coming through. We’ve been conditioning like crazy to be ready for a moment like this, and we just outplayed them. Even crazier is that Isabella said the entire season that she was going to get that final goal. So, when she did, we freaked.”

But head coach Mary Bergmann said she and her Hurricanes had no doubt in their minds that they were going to walk off the field victorious. She said even knowing that the Trojans are 15-time state champions didn’t faze them.

“We were not intimidated,” she said. “We walked in saying we’re going to do this — we’re going to get the job done. We knew it was going to happen, it was just a matter of when, which is why we didn’t lose our cool. We had shots, the goalie was just great. I’m so happy for them.”

Amanda Grimes came away with 16 saves for Garden City, making three of them across the golden-goal periods. Two of them were on shots by senior midfielder Olivia Rongo (one goal), who also scooped up back-to-back ground balls in the second session before her shot with 9.5 seconds on the clock was scooped up.

“One of our mottos this year has been to be ‘all in,’” Rongo said. “I knew we needed to get the ball back. Another of our mantras has been ‘head, heart and hustle,’ just playing smart, but putting all we have into it. We’re all exhausted, but every single second out there was so worth it. We wanted this so bad. It feels good to finally go out there and do what everyone thought we couldn’t.”

Farnan said there was just one other thing on her mind after the monumental victory under the scorching sun for three hours.

“I’m so hungry — I could eat so much right now,” she said. “I kept telling everyone, I know you’re tired, but push through because it’s going to be worth it. And it was — we’re Long Island champions.”