Dutchtown turns back ESJ in final game, moves on to postseason
Published 12:00 am Wednesday, February 4, 2009
By RYAN ARENA
Sports Editor
East St. John’s season came to a close with a tough matchup at Dutchtown on Friday night — the District 6-I champion Griffins have high hopes for the postseason, and needed a strong performance in their final regular season game.
It would have one, as Dutchtown’s Drake Fruge scored six goals in an 11-1 victory.
Dutchtown (20—5-1, 9-1) officially clinched the district championship two weeks ago, and was scheduled to learn its playoff seeding yesterday morning.
For East St. John (8-14, 1-9), a competitive match went back and forth for 15 first half minutes. But once the Griffins’ scored, the floodgates opened.
“We had a tough time stopping (Fruge),” said East St. John coach Paul Dupuy. “We were missing one of our better defenders (sophomore Juan Rodriguez), and Joe (Perrilloux) had to try and cover both the flank and their top scorer. Once they realized our weakness, they started exploiting it.”
Antonio Guerrero scored East St. John’s only goal.
Dutchtown took a 5-1 lead at halftime.
“They’d just cross it right into their speedster,” said Dupuy. “Not many guys are as fast as Joe, but he is. And that made it tougher on him, trying to go back and forth between spots.”
Dupuy said with the season over, he looks to shift the team’s focus going into next season, starting primarily with its work in the summer.
“We’re going to take a bit of a different approach,” he said. “I’ve got to help these guys to mature. The biggest thing this team is lacking right now is emotional maturity. When things go bad, we tend to fall apart and point fingers. We’ve got some players with a lot of athletic potential, but we need improvement on the other end of it.”
Dupuy said that the Wildcats had their work cut out for them again this season in a tough district, but that he expected a bit more in terms of results.
“Going 8-14, considering the district we play in, it’s not terrible,” he said. “But it’s not what I anticipated. I thought we’d be a little more competitive with those teams in the district race.”
