Riverhead field hockey barely misses playoffs in coach’s final season

Before the Riverhead field hockey season started, head coach Cheryl Walsh-Edwards felt that if they won the games they should and won some they shouldn’t, a playoff berth was within reach. 

The team has steadily improved since 2022 — a season in which the Blue Waves mustered only two wins. The three seniors on the team today were freshmen in 2022, just trying to find a way to rebuild a program that had suffered mightily following austerity that saw all sports cut for a year. Kyleigh Lennon, Abigail Maaiki and Emma Kennedy took their lumps and bruises that year but it was the first true step in the rebuild.

In 2023, the team improved its win total to three and last year they finished the season 5-8-1. If Copiague had shown up on time Tuesday afternoon for the final game of the season at Pulaski Street Sports Complex, Riverhead would have had a chance to finish their season 7-7 on Senior Day, but instead the matchup ended in a tie because the game was called due to darkness. It left their final record at 6-7-1.

“I’m super upset that this is how our senior game went,” Walsh-Edwards said. “These three girls deserved more than a half of a game in their last game of their careers. They worked so hard for the program. I couldn’t have asked for more out of them during their time playing here.”

Though playoffs weren’t really in the equation on the final day of the season, with Riverhead positioned 12th in the standings coming into the day, it could have been a proper farewell to the three. But had a few games over the course of the season gone a little differently, playoffs would absolutely be in the picture.

“The game that still bothers me to this day is the loss against Huntington,” Walsh-Edwards said. “We had so many chances to win that game.”

The matchup against Huntington, which ended up making the playoffs, was deadlocked at 0-0 heading into the fourth quarter. Both goalies were unstoppable that day. Riverhead’s Casey Hubbard made nine saves and Huntington’s Kathleen Cocoman came up with eight. But late in the fourth quarter, Huntington was able to make the breakthrough as Cassidy Harris found the back of the net for the game-winner. Had that game gone the other way, Riverhead could have potentially finished the season at 8-6.

“It would have been nice to make the playoffs this year, and it wasn’t because the girls didn’t work hard enough or anything like that,” Walsh-Edwards said, who will be retiring after coaching the varsity field hockey team for 25 years. “We just couldn’t stay healthy. We started the season with only 14 and we ended with 11. We had to play girls in spots they weren’t comfortable with and had to bring JV girls up that were essentially just playing at the middle school. We did the best we could.”

One of those injuries was to Gabriella Rossetti, who will undoubtedly be the main cog within the team in the years to come. She tore her meniscus in the third game of the season.

“If we had a full team all year and won some of those closer games, who knows how things would have ended up,” Walsh-Edwards said. “Playing in the playoffs is a much different atmosphere and we would have been up against teams that practice all year long, with girls playing travel. But it would have been nice to say we did make the playoffs again.”

Even though Walsh-Edwards is retiring from the program she gave so much of her life to, she doesn’t think she can fully step away. After being a perennial playoff team in her heyday, she wanted nothing more to return the field hockey program to prominence.

“I think we made tremendous strides over the last few years,” Walsh-Edwards said. “I’ll be around. I don’t know in what capacity, but after you’ve done something for so long, it’s hard to just fully step away.”