It was a long afternoon for the Pine Bush boys’ soccer team.
The Bushmen, who had clinched a spot in the Section 9 Class AA tournament, all three of their Orange County Interscholastic Athletic Association Division II games so far, had nothing for the defending state champions on Friday afternoon, suffering a 5-1 loss to Monroe-Woodbury.

“It wasn’t our best game,” Pine Bush coach Marc Gittleman said. “We had ups and downs. We’ve got a lot of work to do.”

The Crusaders jumped out to a 3-0 lead in the first half when Monroe-Woodbury’s Chris Ryan sent in a corner kick from the right and defender Tyler Koblish redirected it into the goal outside the reach of goalkeeper Gabe Ilioiu for the first goal of the game.

Owen Kelly and Petro Klishch added first-half goals to give the Crusaders a 3-0 halftime lead. Eric Shippee and Alex Lopez scored a goal each in the second half.

“Any time you’re going to play against a defending state champion, it’s going to be used as a measuring stick,” Gittleman said. “We knew coming in we were going to have stuff to work on. We know what those things are. Now we’ve got to hit the ground and piece it together.”

The Crusaders (9-2-2) kept Ilioiu busy all game, sending him diving to his left and right on the way to 12 saves.

“There were a lot of shots fired on him,” Gittleman said. “He did a great job doing what he can. He made us look a lot better, which is tough go do when you’re losing, 5-0.”
Chris Hall provided Pine Bush’s only goal in the final minute to disrupt the Crusaders’ shutout.

The Bushmen (5-7-0) have four regular season games remaining with which to shore things up before the start of the sectional tournament.

“We’ve done a lot of work with stringing it from the back to the middle to the front and the other way,” Gittleman said. “We’ve got to shore that up. We’ve grown a lot in eight weeks, and we’ve got two more works to put some finishing touches before the postseason starts.”