Football Notebook: Hackley, White Plains, Woodlands, Sleepy Hollow
Hackley – Thanks to a strong defense the Hornets remained undefeated 6-0 by beating King Low Heywood Thomas 24-12. The Hornets touchdowns were scored by running back Ian Parnell, wide receiver Mustefa Dais and quarterback Joe McDermott. Dais caught a pass from McDermott. Parnell’s and McDermott’s touchdowns were scored on the ground. Kicker Samuel Alabaster added a 22-yard field goal in the game.
“We were preparing all week for their physicality and their run game and I thought our defense did a hell of a job limiting their run game a lot better than we saw other teams do on film. That was the key to the game,” said Hornets head coach Phil Treglia.
The Hornets aren’t the biggest team on defense but they show they have a lot of speed and athletic ability.
“We try to preach everyone to the football even though we’re a little undersized,” said Treglia. “You know 11 guys to the football is what we try to preach and today we really did a nice job.”
One of the reasons the Hornets have been so successful this fall has been the play of their starting quarterback McDermott.
“Joey, first of all he is a great person. He’s quiet. He’s humble. He works hard every day. We don’t have to motivate him. He motivates himself. I’m so happy for him because he puts so much work in over the summer and it’s paying off during the football season,” said Treglia.
Hackley had a bigger number of kids come out football this year compared to year’s past.
“It’s not easy to get kids to come out for football now a days, but these kids did it. They’re led by a strong senior class of about 10 seniors really pulling the underclassmen with them,” said Treglia.
The Hornets final home game of the regular season will be this weekend before going on the road to play St. Luke’s and Rye Country Day.
White Plains: The Tigers lost their final regular season game of the season to Clarkstown South 34-21. With the loss the Tigers’ record dropped to 1-6 on the season. Their next game will be on Thanksgiving Day in the Turkey Bowl versus Stepinac. The Tigers’ touchdowns were scored on the ground by Brandon Williams and Chris Jordan. Williams also threw for one touchdown to Lukas Repetti.
It has been a challenging season for the Tigers, Skip Stevens and his staff. The record doesn’t nearly reflect the blood, sweat and tears that went into the season. Football season might end officially on Thanksgiving for the Tigers but for football players and the coaches there is no off-season. They work all year round to get in tremendous shape and to prepare the players for eight to 12 games a year.
These players and coaches deserve to keep their heads up and remember that sometimes the beauty of the season is going through all the hard times together as a team. Just because a team doesn’t make it to the playoffs doesn’t mean the season and all of their hard work is worth nothing. Sometimes it’s hard to realize in life you learn more in losing than you do winning.
Woodlands: Is there a defense out there that contains the multi weapons of the Falcons offense? The Falcons had another wonderful week on the gridiron. This was homecoming weekend for the Falcons and in front of a standing room only crowd they beat the Tuckahoe Tigers 47-13.
Junior running back Tyrone Barber had over 300 yards of total offense and scored five touchdowns in the Falcons seventh win in seven games.
In the first round of the playoffs on Saturday the Falcons will host the Bronxville Broncos. These two teams met in the first week of the season and the Falcons won 40-32. The Falcons won the game, but they played very sloppy that day. They’re a much stronger team than they were in early September and they also had over 100 yards in penalties in that game.
Bronxville in their last two games beat Tuckahoe 7-0 and lost to Dobbs Ferry 37-17. Even though they have their best player back from injury Luke Marrone the Broncos don’t have the offense this year to go toe to toe with the Falcons and they have match-up problems with trying to defend the Falcons. It will be near impossible for the Broncos to contain Barber, Ron Richards, Justin Riccio, Raymond Jackson, Dylan Eddy and D’Andre Tilford. At best maybe the Broncos can stop one or two of these players but containing all of them is an impossible task. No team this season has been able to do this to the Falcons.
The key to the game will be ball control and the Falcons must limit their mistakes. Don’t let the Broncos hang around in this game. Senior defensive lineman Desean Downey had at least three sacks during the first meeting of the two teams. If the Falcons score over 35 points in this game they should advance to the Section 1 Class Championship Game to face the winner of Dobbs Ferry/ Rye Neck.
Sleepy Hollow: The Horsemen are one of the most resilient football teams in Section 1. They have come a long way since that tough loss to Harrison in week three. They’re an entirely different team.
Devin Lopez started turning heads during the Big Apple Classic Seven-on-Seven Tournament in White Plains in June. This past week he arguably played his finest game at the varsity level. In the Horsemen’s 34-21 victory over Ossining he ran for over 200 yards and three touchdowns. Lopez’s performance was very important because they were playing the game without running back Dominic Onwe who was injured a week earlier against Lakeland.
This week the Horsemen will have their first round Class A playoff game at home on Thursday afternoon versus Saunders.
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