Boys Soccer: Lakeland Summer League Is Back
By MIKE SABINI

SHRUB OAK, N.Y. – After not being able to play last summer because of the pandemic, the Lakeland Boys Summer Soccer League is back in action for its 14th season.

The league was founded by Lakeland coach Tim Hourahan in 2007. It started with four teams: Lakeland, Mahopac, Hendrick Hudson, and Putnam Valley, playing one game a week for four weeks.

A year later, Yorktown and Walter Panas were added.

For the last five years or so, the league has consisted of 10 teams playing twice a week for a nine-game, round-robin schedule before the playoffs.

“Last summer, I had made the decision to move it to 12 teams, but the pandemic had shut all sports down,” Hourahan said. “When I was preparing to get the league back up and running in 2021, I had an outpouring of programs looking to play this summer. So, we now have 15 teams competing, playing two or three games a week for the next six weeks.”

John Jay-East Fishkill, Roy C. Ketcham, Yorktown, Byram Hills, Panas, Lakeland, Rye, Harrison, Eastchester, Briarcliff, Somers, Putnam Valley, Brewster, Valhalla, and John Jay-Cross River are the teams in the league this summer, with all games being played at Lakeland High School.

Hourahan credits 13-time state champion, Lakeland field hockey coach Sharon Sarsen, for giving him the idea of having a summer league.

“She had an established field hockey summer league for many years and I had just decided that we had nothing like it for high-school soccer and that it was time to get something together,” Hourahan said. “I asked her a zillion questions on what I needed to do and how to run a proper league.”

The league has had an effect on schools all over Section 1 and beyond.

“We started small and now it has exploded,” Hourahan said. “Fifteen teams is just more than 20 percent of all Section 1 soccer teams. It is amazing. This boys soccer league has now even spurned off a boys league down in Rockland over the past few summers. Even a few coaches up in Section 9 at Goshen and Cornwall have reached out to speak on what to do and they are putting together a 7v7 league this summer for teams up there. And there is also a girls summer league run by the Lakeland girls coach (Shawn Sullivan) at Granite Knolls Park this summer.”

Hourahan said many teams that participate in the summer league go on to achieve success in the traditional high-school fall season.

“Of the 12 teams playing over the past decade or so, six of those programs went on to win a sectional title the fall after playing in the summer league: Briarcliff, Byram Hills, Lakeland, Rye, Somers and Yorktown,” Hourahan said. “We even had a Somers team capture a state title in 2016. There is something to be said for teams getting extra opportunities to play together, to help bring along the players rising up from JV, to get game action to work on formations and moving players into different positions on the field. All of it has been so beneficial for me and I think all the other coaches feel the same way.”

On July 13, the league is going to have games at both the stadium field and top field. The latter is the multi-purpose field that Lakeland’s baseball team calls home in the spring.

“Lakeland is such a beautiful campus and our administration had done an incredible job bringing these facilities to the level they are at now,” Hourahan said. “All of our coaches at Lakeland do a tremendous job working together to share these all-purpose fields. We are all so lucky to be able to have the opportunity to coach in a district with such great fields.”

Yorktown, which won its league title last fall, started its summer-league campaign with a 2-0 victory against Briarcliff on Sunday, June 20, led by Derek Beloff-Davis (2 goals) and Vicente Lyon (3 saves).

Lakeland started the same night, tying Rye, 0-0, with the Hornets’ Chris Ciraco making 3 saves.