Injury-ravaged Saints have no trouble stopping Pats

jbaker@pawtuckettimes.com

WARWICK – It wouldn’t be an understatement to say veteran St. Raphael Academy head coach Frank Balcarcel had serious doubts about how good his squad would be this season.

He had two stellar reasons why: First, he discovered last March that standout Eddy Cardona Jr. had sustained a serious leg injury while playing with his Bayside club team of East Providence, and would be unable to wear a purple-and-gold uniform this fall.

Then, on Sept. 1, he watched Julian Giraldo go down with an ankle injury during an Injury Fund contest against Blackstone Valley Prep at Max Read Field.

“When Eddy went down, I knew it was a pretty bad injury; I knew I was going to have to plan around him,” he added. “Going into the fall, I knew we wouldn’t have him, and it would be tough. Then Julian got hurt, and I was thinking at that point, ‘Are we snake-bit? This is happening again?’

“The fact we made it to the (Division III) finals last year had a lot to do with those two. Eddy’s one of our top scorers, and Ju- lian a premier defender.”

According to Balcarcel, all he could do was rally his troops and ask them to work harder at practice to make up for the two losses. Based on the Saints’ superlative performance in a critical early-season D-III showdown at usually-powerful Pilgrim on Friday afternoon, he more than succeeded.

Senior Joe Majkut produced two tallies and quin-captain Cano Morales a goal and a feed as SRA hammered the Patriots, 4-0, before a decent crowd at Michael Morry Field.

The Saints, who controlled possession through at least 65 of the 80 minutes, improved to 4-0 in league action while the Pats (2-1) fell for the first time.

When asked if he expected such a dominant performance, Balcarcel laughed, “I don’t know about that. I thought the key was the fact, for the first 15 minutes, Pilgrim came out so hard – they were playing full throttle going for steals and things – they gassed themselves out. The humidity was crazy.

“While they were going all out trying to set the tone, our guys were using short passes, and we eventually were able to take advantage.”

Morales scored what proved to be the eventual game clincher as the Pats slowly wore down. He had missed on a header inside the right post, but then it hit his face and bounced. When he saw the carom, he used a roundhouse boot to hammer it past Pats’ keeper Max Caparco at 23:30.

Two minutes later, senior quin-captain Max Rodriguez-Cepparo dribbled in, found an opening and tried to get a shot off. As Caparco came out further for a block, Jose DeLaRoca swooped in and stole the ball by the left post.

With about a minute remaining before the break, Majkut notched his first. He raced past two defenders and ripped a try past a diving Caparco to make it 2-0.

Pilgrim nearly took advantage of an infraction early in the final stanza when officials awarded senior midfielder Danny Peixinho a direct kick from 25 yards out and to the left of junior Spencer Hsu. Fortunately for the goalie, the attempt never reached him, as his “wall” 10 yards in front booted it from harm.

About 1:20 later, at the 9:20 mark, Majkut was hauled down by a defender and given a direct kick from 18 yards outside the goal line. He needled it through a barricade of at least 10 Patriots for the 3-0 cushion.

Exactly 5:10 later, Rodriguez-Cepparo and Morales hooked up on another to close the scoring.

“I thought we passed the ball well, and that we got high-percentage chances,” Balcarcel noted. “Then again, the goalie bobbled it a couple of times, so we got lucky. It just have easily been 2-0.

“This is definitely our best game of the year,” he added. “We were able to get to their goalie, which against Pilgrim is unusual; we’ve never been able to do that. Usually, if we get two or three shots, that’s pretty good.

“Simply put, they went out really hard at the start, and on a really hot day, and we took advantage.”

**

St. Raphael 2–2 –4

Pilgrim 0–0 –0

First half: SRA – Cano Morales (una.) 23:30; SRA – Joe Majkut (una.) 38:58.

Second half: SRA – Majkut (una.) 49:20; SRA – Max Rodriguez- Cepparo (Morales) 54:31.