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Sunday - Island, Central and Valley go 1-2-3 (July
27, 2008) - Long Island easily defeated Central to walk away with their fourth consecutive Gold Medal. Hudson Valley also defeated Western to win the Bronze Medal. Western was held scoreless from 7:04 remaining in the first until 9:22 remaining in the fourth (27:42). They scored the first goal of the game with an “accidental” goal. Mitch Keefer tried to feed the ball into the crease, but the passed was missed. It continued on and dribbled past the Haggerty. Valley came back with one of their own when Rob Santangelo found Will Stewart at the top left of the cage. Stewart threw a hard side arm shot that was stick-side low past Jonathon Lawless. Lawless finished with 8s/7ga for Western whose second goal occurred at 7:04, when Matt Springer found Nick Scalzo up top who put the shot off-stick high. Western was leading 2-1; however, the Valley scored the next six goals. Click here for the story. In the first quarter Long Island scored three unanswered goals go their way to a 14-3 win. Matthew Palasek scored his first of six goals with an assist from Steven Murphy on a side arm shot over the top of the goalie's stick. Murphy then turned around and scored his own after picking the ball off the turf and finishing in the back of the net. The final first quarter goal was scored by Thomas Schreiber with a sweep from left to right and a shot beyond the left hip of Steve Mahle. Mahle played the first half of the game and finished at 50% with 6 saves and 6 goals against. The score was 3-0 at the end of the first. Click here for the story.
Chris Nourse of Central had 15 takes, while Ben Litwak (Hudson Valley), Clay Del Prince (Western) and Michael McCormack (Long Island) each had eight takes. Cole McCormack (Hudson Valley) was by far the best face-off man at the tournament; he not only led in number of wins, but also in percentage. McCormack had 63 wins (64.95%). Jeff Froccaro (Long Island) was also a strong force with 48 wins (62.34%). In the team category, each team had a different area in which they excelled.
Summaries for each day are avaiable:
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This was Long Island's 15th Gold Medal, Central's 9th Silver Medal, and Hudson Valley's 7th Bronze Medal. 
During next week, once things start to slow down, Sportsfive.net will be publishing our wrap up article. Since that is a week away, he is a brief look at some of the numbers. Joe Marasco, of Hudson Valley, leads the total goals with 16 and total points with 20. John Greeley, Central, leads assists with 7. Mike Poppleton took the ground ball category with 27. Alex Fiore and Luke Haggerty lead in the goalie category. Fiore ended with 26 saves (57.78%) and Haggerty ended with 29 saves (56.86%).