The Calhoun Colts come in ranked 22nd in the LILJ preseason rankings. Coach Jim Femminella remains at the helm, and guided his team to a 6-7 record last season. They lost in the quarterfinals last season against South Side. Calhoun is in Nassau County’s Conference B and has been in the playoffs every year since 2003. They were a young team in 2021 and come back with another year of experience which can help them potentially take another step forward in their quest to get over the hump and into county finals contention.
Among their key returning players are Jonny Lewis (Fairfield), Alex Vieni (Towson) Peter Thomann (North Carolina), Lewis is entering his senior season and primarily took the face-offs last season as well as played some midfield. He was awesome in face-offs and also had 18 points last season. Vieni is a senior attackman and was the team leader in points last season with 46. On the defensive side, Thomann is back for his junior year and is coming off of a season that saw him record 50 ground balls and cause 17 turnovers. The team is also getting back junior midfielder AJ Molinari who is coming off of an injury last season.
Although they were young Calhoun did lose a few key seniors that left some big shoes to fill. Attackman Braeden Vieni had 39 points last season which was good for the third most on the team. Ryan Baci was a midfielder for the Colts and accounted for 22 points a year ago, and on the defensive end Chris Perrone was a vital part of the Colts defense.
Three young guns that could also see minutes for the Colts this year are freshmen Harley Finkelstein and Braden Garvey, as well as sophomore Mark Restivo.
Calhoun is set to play some important games this season against great competition. Two notable home games on their schedule are against South Side (3/29), and Garden City (4/4). A couple of big away games are at Farmingdale (4/8) and at MacArthur (5/11).
Calhoun has some notable alumni that have come up through the program and have now taken their game to the collegiate level. Two players that were in the class of 2018 are Kyle Munson who is now playing collegiately at Drexel, and Nick Turrini who is playing at Lehigh.
As for the 2022 season Coach Femminella believes that two of the keys to having success are ground balls and riding. One important stat is that Calhoun was 6-1 last season when they scored at least 10 goals and 0-6 when scoring fewer than 10 goals.
