Seaford girls soccer tops Wantagh on Ally Cullingford's goal

Seaford owned the edge in possession and scoring opportunities. What the visiting Vikings didn’t own was the lead against Wantagh.

Nil-nil, 10 minutes left.

Then Ally Cullingford had a chance, and the Seaford senior midfielder did something with it. She buried that soccer ball in the netting with 9:36 remaining.

The Vikings held on for a 1-0 Nassau A/B-I win Thursday against their rival, the team that ended their 2024 season in the Nassau Class A semis in OT and then took the title.

“This is probably one of the games that we asterisk on the schedule from the get-go,” coach Ken Botti said. “And, yeah, of course, there’s extra motivation because they knocked us out, and we felt like we underachieved last year. We felt like we deserved to be in the county final.”

There are 10 starters back, so Seaford (4-0, 3-0) is shooting at winning the county final.

“I think we have a very good chance,” Cullingford said.

Botti laid out the full game plan.

“We start small, one game at a time,” he said. “But, yeah, we want to take the conference. We want to be in the county final and we want to play for Long Island and we want to go upstate.”

Cadan Calderaro made three saves for her clean sheet, and Cullingford, a D-I Stonehill commit, scored from the left side of the box off Kaylie Conklin’s feed.

“We had a little give-and-go moment,” Cullingford said.

So Wantagh fell to 2-2 overall and 2-1 in A/B-I.

“We’ve got a young team that’s searching right now, and that’s perfectly fine,” coach James Polo said. “We’re searching now so we can find it for the end of the season.”

The defending champs lost senior goalkeeper Gabriella Astaiza to a torn ACL in the opener. Eighth-grader Jacqueline Hudson played the first half vs. the Vikings and freshman Gianna Field played the second. Both made five saves.

“They’re not scared of the light,” Polo said. “If it’s a thing that not one of them is taking charge [of the job], I’m confident with both of them in net.”