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06/19/2022 12:00 AMWins and losses weren’t the biggest concern for Justin Blood during his first season as head coach of the North Haven boys’ lacrosse team. The Nighthawks were faced with the challenge of playing high-caliber programs while learning a new system under Blood’s tutelage, and North Haven’s coach felt proud to see every athlete in the lineup give it their all through the course of the campaign.
Coach Blood joined the North Haven boys’ lacrosse program after having previously served as an assistant coach at Notre Dame-West Haven. Blood knew that there was much work to be done as he took the reins with the Nighthawks, but the team’s student-athletes and members of the North Haven community made the move go smoothly.
“It’s much more work than what is at the surface. I think all coaching is like that. I’m so lucky that I’m able to coach at North Haven. The school district, the athletic department, and all of the players and families have been nothing but tremendous,” Coach Blood said. “All of the student-athletes are incredibly respectful. They work hard, and they do truly have a sense of being a teammate with one another. They made it a true pleasure to be the head coach.”
Senior midfielder Jake Hines, senior attacker Sebastian Derubeis, and junior goalkeeper Michael Masto served as the Nighthawks’ captains and led the team to its greatest heights in the 2022 season. Coach Blood said that all three captains set an excellent example that had a positive effect on the entire squad.
“They led by example on and off the field. Their work ethic was above all, and it was a true pleasure working with them as a head coach-to-captain relationship,” said Blood. “They brought a sense of hard work and focus that I’ve never seen in a high school athlete before. They truly put 100 percent of their effort into practice and into games at all times.”
North Haven won three of its first seven games of the spring season, posting victories over Hamden (16-3), the Branford-East Haven co-op (4-3), and Shelton (8-7). The Nighthawks were only able to win one of their final nine contests to finish the year with a record of 4-12. However, Coach Blood appreciated his team’s approach to every game and the fact that his players always stuck together and gutted it out regardless of the results.
“At times, it’s difficult when we’re playing such good-caliber teams that it’s easy to kind of get lost in that, but we never did. We always played to the last second of games, and we utilized our time on the field, knowing that we were building,” Blood said. “We were still working our systems and working what we do in practice. That was very helpful, as well.”
The highlight of North Haven’s season came when the team played a road game versus Hamden on May 11. The Nighthawks had defeated Hamden by a 16-3 score earlier in the year, although they knew that they were going to get a tougher test from the Green Dragons in the rematch.
That’s exactly what North Haven got, but Coach Blood’s club battled hard to earn a 7-6 win in overtime. Hines netted the decisive goal in the OT period to give the Nighthawks a victory that Blood felt was a true testament to what the team worked for all season long.
“With lacrosse, teams get better throughout the season. That’s how sports works. It was a hard-nosed battle. We played to the last second, and that was really where we saw our team compete to a different level and really hone in and focus,” said Blood. “They are the reason we won the game. We settled in, we played to our style, we executed, and we won the game strictly because of that. That was a really nice thing to see.”
The Nighthawks took two losses after the Hamden victory, but Coach Blood still felt that they finished their season strong. Blood was impressed with his players’ ability to learn a new style of play in a different system while competing against the elite teams in the SCC.
“It’s difficult to implement a new package as a new coaching staff to pretty much a brand-new team,” Blood said. “It took a little while for everyone to understand the application of all of these things, but by the end of the season, I was very impressed with how we were running our plays and our sets.”
Hines finished the season with 24 goals and 34 assists on his way to earning a spot on the All-SCC Second Team. Junior Jeffrey Karavas scored 35 goals to go with 22 assists on the year.
North Haven’s senior class also included Osman Ahmetaj, Jared Anderson, Jacob Balga, Anthony Cavaliere, Caden Doheny, Xander Lawless, Aidan Rapuano, Michael Rubano, Riley Sykes, Zion Teclechiel, and Nick Tondalo. Coach Blood is going to miss the leadership that he received from his graduating seniors, but is excited for another year of coaching incoming seniors like Karavas, who proved a threat on all ends of the field; and Masto, who he calls a big difference-maker in net.
“I’m incredibly excited for next season. We have many returning players who have truly started to understand and grasp our process and our systems,” said Blood. “The ending of our season, although not making states, we had a true understanding of how our offenses and defenses were starting to run.”
Coach Blood is looking forward to building on the framework that was created this year when the Nighthawks return to the field in 2023. Blood worked hard to get the program on the right track and considers the 2022 campaign a success that has the program set up well for next season.
“The whole goal of this season was to kind of lay the foundation of a successful lacrosse program, which was something we think we were successful at,” Blood said. “We played in SCC Division I, which is an incredibly difficult caliber of play. Our record truly didn’t show the amount of growth that we had as a program. That, I’m very proud of everyone for.”
In addition to Masto and Karavas, North Haven’s junior class also featured Jayesh Komal, Brian Lastomirsky, Mark Ludovico, Nicholas Magro, Chayse Mangino, Mateo Raiano, Joey Taft, and Aiden Touch. The Nighthawks’ roster also included sophomores Alex Gaetano, Saleem Khan, Jeremiah Lopez, Yaseen Mahmoud, and Nicholas Richitelli; along with freshmen Tyler Dimauro, Jonah Hammarlund, Noah Holt, William Keaney, Jack Marro, Christian Mongillo, Pruthivi Patel, Jake Pieper, Ben Pizzano, Nick Romano, and Cody Vanacore.