The Wantagh boys’ lacrosse team is in the midst of another season where it looks to make a run for a Nassau County championship. Due to falling enrollment, the team is in Conference C this season. The boys are led by head coach John Ciuffo and assistants James Polo and Lou Lago.

The season started with the annual “22 dinner,” which honors the late Scott DeVerna, a Wantagh lacrosse player who wore the number 22 and died tragically in 1999. Each season, the player known as the best overall leader is voted on to wear 22 in honor of DeVerna. This season the team voted for senior Tom Rohan, who has battled back from a football injury and added energy to the midfield.

Wantagh has started the season with a 7-2 overall record and a 4-1 record in a very competitive Conference C, which includes Seaford and Friends Academy. The team’s biggest win of the season so far was against a solid Bethpage team, 10-9, where senior captain Finn Duignan scored three goals. Sophomore Nick Teresky had a pair of goals. Goalie James McCarron had 10 saves in net and Anthony DiMatteo, as he does in every game, controlled the faceoffs. DiMatteo helped break open a close game against Mineola by winning 21 out of 23 faceoffs and turning it into a 13-7 romp for the Warriors.

Captains, in addition to Duignan, include Joe Conklin, Tom Rohan and Pat Walsh. While Duignan is an attack, the other three captains are joined in the midfield by Tommy Von Bargen, Ryan McCarty, and Liam Ireland. Other key attack players are Teresky, Don Schaumloffel and Ethan Insigna.

Leading the defense are Jack Conklin (another one of the Conklin triplets), Gavin Guerrera, Kyle Craig, Joe Moritz and Will DiMatteo (no relation to Anthony).

The team took its annual trip to Arizona, where it defeated two of that state’s better teams by an 11-0 and a 13-2 win. It dropped a close 7-4 opener to one of the top teams in Southeastern Pennsylvania: Springfield Delco, two-time defending Pa. state champs.

Duignan says that as always the main goal of the team is to win a county title, which it hasn’t achieved since 2001, when Wantagh won states, too.

The Warriors play a huge game against another of Conference C’s top teams, Cold Spring Harbor, under the lights at CSH on May 4. Going into that key matchup, Duignan said that to win Wantagh had to “play hard and make no mistakes.”