Huskers look to defend summer soccer league title

Last year was Justin Huff’s first as head coach at his alma mater, Yorktown — and it started off great before it even officially began.

That’s because his Huskers beat Carmel 3-2 in a penalty shootout in the Lakeland Boys Soccer Summer League championship game.

“Last year was a great learning opportunity for the program,” Huff said. “We are fortunate enough to return a lot of players and they have already shown this summer they are focused. The summer is always a great way to remind players what the high-school game is really about.”

Yorktown started this year’s summer-league campaign well too, with a 2-0 victory against Briarcliff on June 15 and a 3-1 triumph against Eastchester the following evening.

“With summer league this year, I’m expecting to win it all again and for the returners to step into their new roles as leaders,” Huff said. “It’s a learning curve for everyone and we need to make the most of our chances.”

Now in its 18th season, the league has 16 teams, including one from as far south as White Plains and two from Dutchess County (Roy C. Ketcham and John Jay–East Fishkill).

“We actually had 18 teams participate last summer but had a few programs drop out due to coaching changes,” said league founder and director, Lakeland coach Tim Hourahan. “Sixteen has been the perfect number over the years to run this league, to have eight rounds of pool play and then a 16-team single-elimination knockout playoffs at the end to crown a champion. This league has become vital for so many programs and with the inability to expand my summer league to accommodate all teams there are now other leagues running similar programs at Ossining and Goshen. Teams have been willing to travel a little farther to come play at Lakeland as the level of teams competing has been really strong with multiple league and Section 1 champions coming out of this league every fall.”

Somers (Class A), which won the states in 2021; Yorktown (Class A), which won a sectional title in 2022; Eastchester, which shared the sectional Class AA title in 2023; Byram Hills, which won the Class A sectional title in 2023; and Rye, which won the Class A sectional title in 2024, are all in the league.

The above Somers and Yorktown squads, along with Rye’s 2019 sectional title team, also won the summer-league crown.

“Every team that comes to play June, July, and into early August all are going after it, competing like it is the Section 1 Tournament,” Hourahan said.

Lakeland tied its summer-league opener 0-0 against Carmel on June 15 and defeated sister school Walter Panas the following day 1-0.

“While we are lucky to return a captain Lucas Boyko for a second season in the program, we are really stressing the importance of senior leadership as a whole from this 10-man class,” Hourahan said. “On top of that we want those seniors to help integrate the players rising from JV and display the standard necessary to play at this level in training sessions and summer-league games. And of course winning is a skill, so it will be important for us to compete with some of the best teams in Section 1 this summer.”