July 24, 2008 - In the final game of the first day of competition, the Western team easily defeated New York City, 12-4. Three of NYC`s four goals were scored during EMO and three of NYC goals were scored by Forest Sonnenfeldt.
As with the first game of the day for Western, Coholan and Springer were major players. Combined, the two finished with 6g-1a. Attackmen, Nick Scalzo and Brian Scheetz added three more goals giving the attack totals 9 of 12 goals for the Western team. Western controlled the game from start to finished, giving only brief opportunity to the NYC team.
The two NYC losses today (10-3 loss to Valley) do not adequately represent the improvements that the NYC program has made of the past two seasons. However, the number of small mistakes that NYC was made today started adding up. The City had a number of great opportunity where they beat their men, but that could not finish.
The final game of the day was also the most plagued with penalties as a total of 11 were assessed (Western-6, NYC-5) which resulted in four EMO goals.
In the cage, Scott Tota (after his strong performance against Long Island) played they entire game and finished 64% (7s/4ga) and looked comfortable and strong between the pipes. He seemed to be the strongest goalie in the first day of the competition in both of his games. For NYC, Grant Tomashoff played the majority of the game and finished with 10s/12ga. Tomashoff came out with 2:30 remaining after taking a hard hit to the head. Samuel Grinberg finished the game, but did not face any shots.
In the midfield, Kyle Van Thof, Chris Mason and Mitch Keefer were major players scoring the remaining 3 goals (along with 2 assists) for Western. The City won more face-off`s with Nicholas Stanley winning 7/13 and Julian Musikant winning 4/5. Musikant also led NYC in ground balls with 4.
Leading Western`s ground ball efforts were Tyler Travis with 5 and Van Thof with 4. Travis also led with 3 takes while AJ Glagolev had 2 takeaways.
Overall, Western doubled the shots on cage of NYC (22-11) and more then doubled the total shots (35-16). Western also won the ground ball battle 29-21 and had more one-on-one takes (7-4).
Scoring for Western were Springer (4g), Coholan (2g-1a), Van Thof (2g-1a), Scalzo (2g), Mason (2a), Tundo (2a), Keefer (1g), Scheetz (1g) and Matt Tobia (1a).
Scoring for New York City were Sonnenfeldt (2g), Jake Greenberg (1g) and Stanley (1a).
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