Westhampton Beach Football Suffers First Loss of the Season to Hills West

Westhampton Beach football head coach Bryan Schaumloffel didn’t mince words after his team suffered its first loss of the season in its home finale, 45-33, to Half Hollow Hills West on Friday night.

“Losing stinks,” he said, frankly, “and we’re not accustomed to it, especially on our home field. I told our guys to kind of hear the cheer of the other team. It doesn’t happen too often.”

The Hurricanes last lost on their home turf to Islip in the opening round of last year’s playoffs, but as Schaumloffel pointed out, it had been even longer since they lost a regular season home game. But it wasn’t like last week’s loss came to a slouch of a team. In fact, it was quite the opposite. It was a battle of two unbeaten teams and Hills West proved to be the better team that night.

“As I told the guys, there’s no doubt that they played hard and there’s no doubt that they want to win, but we still have to get better and I think it’s less physical and it’s more mental,” Schaumloffel said. “We’re still making too many mental mistakes. We’re shooting ourselves in the foot, and I think as a coaching staff, as players, we have to think back and reflect on this game and see what we could do better and improve.”

A Brody Schaffer 22-yard field goal within the final two minutes of the first quarter gave Westhampton Beach a slim 3-0 lead heading into the second quarter, which is when the game really opened up scoring-wise.

Hills West matched the Hurricanes’ field goal with one of its own early in the second quarter, then the Colts recovered a fumble on the ensuing drive at the ’Canes 19-yard line to set up a quick 16-yard touchdown strike for the game’s first six-point play.

On the ensuing kickoff, Westhampton Beach junior Kevin Smith returned the kick 67 yards, setting up his team deep in Hills West territory. Eventually, Schaffer, a sophomore, punched the ball in from three yards out, and after the successful extra point, the game was tied, 10-10.

From that point forward, the script of the game seemed to shift in the favor of the Colts, who possess a lot of weapons on offense. They outscored the ’Canes, 21-3, in a relatively short amount of game time between the second and third quarters. By the time Schaffer scored his second touchdown of the game with 4:39 remaining in the third quarter, Hills West was already leading, 31-19, and the game seemed out of reach.

The Colts, basically, had an answer for everything the ’Canes would do on offense, and going tit for tat like that with an offensively potent team was something Schaumloffel agreed after the game probably wasn’t in the best interest of his team. To put the Colts’ offense in perspective, quarterback Joseph Filardi threw six touchdown passes and rushed for 69 yards on seven carries. Two of his touchdown passes went to Ryan Bonocore. Jalyn Jacques had 217 all-purpose yards and caught two touchdown passes by himself.

“Whenever you’re playing someone with weapons like that, you don’t want to get into a shootout with them,” he said. “I’m still proud of our kids, they’re doing a great job, they’re working hard and they’re going to get better. We’re going to work on the little things and work on those mistakes and then we’re going to get after it next week at Sayville.”

Westhampton Beach had some standout performances of its own. Junior quarterback Will Gambino was 17 for 35 and threw for 144 yards and two touchdown passes, one a deep 48-yard completion to junior receiver Michael LoRusso, who finished the game with seven catches for 77 yards. Schaffer ran for 91 yards on 23 carries and made field goals of 23 and 18 yards out. Jordan Brown caught a 6-yard touchdown pass in the fourth quarter. He also led the defense with seven tackles. Smith had four tackles and an interception on defense. Luke Kilroy had six tackles and Noah Hebberd had five tackles and a sack.

Now 5-1, the ’Canes will play at Sayville this Friday night at 6 p.m. The Golden Flashes, one of two remaining unbeaten teams in Division III after it defeated East Islip last week, will be another difficult team, Schaumloffel said, but he and his team are not shying away from the challenge.

“We’re still in there, and I told the guys, the bad news is we lost, the good news is, hey, hopefully we’ll see those guys again,” he said. “They’re a really nice team, they have a lot of weapons, some good size. We didn’t think it was going to be an easy game by any means. I was hoping that we would play a little bit better and show up a little bit better. We didn’t, and sometimes that happens, and we’re going to work on it and improve on it.”