Westhill boys soccer exorcises state title game demons, wins by largest-ever margin in Class B final (22 photos)

Middletown, N.Y. — Through the final whistle, the medal ceremony, the trophy presentation and the scrum of photos afterwards, Westhill boys soccer senior captain Jackson Goodness just could not stop smiling.

It was a hard-earned satisfaction.

Westhill (18-1-2) routed Section VI’s Lafayette International 6-0 on Saturday afternoon at Middletown High School to claim the Class B state title, the program’s third state championship. After a loss in the Class A state semifinals in 2023 and a heartbreaking 1-0 defeat in the Class B state championship game last season, Saturday’s result was a catharsis for everyone in the Westhill community – especially its core of players who fell just short in previous years.

“I’ll be smiling for the next couple of months, maybe the rest of my life about this,” Goodness said. “We’ve worked so hard, we’ve done so much, we’ve been through thick and thin. We ran in the summer, we put together countless hours and it finally pays off.”

Just how long have the Wolf Pack’s 10 seniors been waiting to bring a state title to Westhill?

“For 13 years, we’ve played together, it kind of came all together,” captain and senior midfielder Maxwell Cowin said. “We played rec, we played club and now it’s just come to this. We’re at the top right now.”

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Westhill’s 6-0 win is the largest margin of victory in a NYSPHSAA boys soccer state championship game since Section V’s McQuaid won the 2017 Class AA title by the same score. It is the largest-ever margin of victory in the Class B championship game.

Just like it did against every team it played in the 2025 postseason, Westhill came out the aggressor on Saturday, piling it on in the first half and cruising to victory in the second half. Across its seven playoff games, the Wolf Pack scored 36 goals and allowed just one. They won every game by at least three goals.

With the experience from last year’s championship game – and the memories of the bitter disappointment that came along with it – Westhill was more poised and confident this time around, senior captain and leading scorer Eric Holstein said.

They couldn’t wait for the opening whistle.

“It’s insane, the adrenaline is crazy,” Holstein said. “Before the game, I was just sitting there and my hands were sweating, my feet were sweating. We were all just full of adrenaline, ready to go out of the gates.”

Goodness started the scoring in the 23rd minute. After catching Lafayette’s goalie off his line, he tested him with a lob, and it went through the goalie’s hands and into the back of the net.

Tyler Gehm doubled Westhill’s advantage in the 26th minute on a rebound from a shot that hit the crossbar. Three minutes later, Eric Holstein put Westhill up 3-0, and a minute after that, he tallied Westhill’s fourth by sidestepping the goalie and firing the ball into the empty net.

Holstein and the rest of the team headed straight for the fence surrounding the field to hug Cal Petrone and Aiden Amidon, two seniors who lost in the state title game with them last year but didn’t play on the team this year.

Westhill’s four first-half goals came in the span of just seven minutes.

“Our strategy is always to catch the other team on their heels, come out hotter and stronger than them,” Holstein said. “They just don’t know what they got hit with.”

The Wolf Pack added two more in the second half while Lafayette struggled to get a touch in Westhill’s penalty box or threaten the goal. Cowin scored Westhill’s fifth goal on a 43rd-minute penalty and Thomas MacLachlan scored the sixth on a 47th-minute rebound volley.

In last year’s final, Westhill went down 1-0 just 12 minutes in and spent over an hour in a futile search for an equalizer. They nearly found one late in the game on a ball that deflected off the crossbar and hit the goalline, but didn’t fully cross it.

On Saturday, they scored twice on balls that deflected off the crossbar.

“Why not, right?” Westhill head coach Tom Etoll said. “We’ll take it.”

Westhill’s seniors haven’t just been working towards Saturday’s triumph since the end of last season, or even the season before. They’ve been chasing the trophy since they were four years old.

Saturday, they finally got to hold it.

“I think about it every night,” Cowin said. “Might still.”