The 18th ranked team in our preseason rankings is one of the young and talented teams on the island, Half Hollow Hills. Last year, as a team filled with predominantly freshmen they went 11-6 overall with an appearance in the Suffolk Class A Playoffs which saw them defeat Lindenhurst before falling to Northport in the quarterfinals. Led by Head Coach Connor Hagans, he shared with the LILJ what their team goals are and what the keys to success will be this season. “Our goal for 2023 is to build on the success of the ’22 season and taking the next step to be the best we can be. We have a young team with a majority of our players seeing major minutes as freshmen. Our keys to success will be our conditioning and our attention to detail.”
As they aim to build on what they accomplished in 2022, they’ll look to do so with one of the top players in the class of 2025 Anthony Raio. He’s an electrifying midfielder that brings speed, athleticism and a scoring presence from a multitude of areas on the field. He filled up the stat sheet in 2022, posting 25 goals and 23 assists. Raio will be playing alongside seniors Andrew Cosentino and Santino Rossitto who each had big time 2022 seasons. Cosentino led Hills in points with 61 as he scored 28 goals and had 33 assists. Rossitto was the top goal scorer with 31, along with 15 assists for a total of 46 points. In addition to the three starting midfielders, sophomores Luke Bradley and Ryan Chung are likely to see significant minutes. Sophomore James Bruno will be the featured player at attack, contributing last year with 16 goals and five assists.
Class A is very deep at the face-off position with multiple division I bound commits, but Hills has a top flight FOGO in sophomore Nico Ghicas who gives them a great chance to win most matchups at the face-off X. Ghicas won over 150 faceoffs last year.
The talent on this roster continues with long poles as well with sophomore Joe Filaradi at LSM. He’s shown on multiple occasions that he can carry the ball down the field and is a legitimate threat to score, finding the back of the net five times and adding six assists. Defensively the net will be protected by sophomore Sal Santoro, replacing 2022 graduate Jacob Shapiro as the starting goalie. Statistically they allowed 6.4 goals per game, a number that will surely see them winning their share of games if they’re able to replicate that this season.
Besides losing Shapiro, they will also be without defensemen Mike Piraino and Luke Lulley as well as midfielders AJ Nambiar and Andrew Burke who were graduates in the class of 2022. This opens the door for some of their young guns that they have coming up to potentially get minutes this season. Freshman Chris Nolan at attack and freshmen Sal Caiazzo and Jake Casamento who play defense will all be on varsity.
This year the conference is filled with quite a handful of contenders with Hills being right in the thick of things. Some of their noteworthy league matchups on the docket include Ward Melville (3/28), Northport (4/4) Huntington (4/20), and Connetquot (5/3). Their first official game of the season is a non-league matchup on the south shore against Seaford on March 24th.
