: Longwood (5-3) hopes to be competitive despite graduating 15 seniors. Experienced players are all-county linebacker Jim Mancaruso, tailback Heath Fitzsimmons, quarterback John Halverson and guard Willie Jones (5-10, 235)
LONGWOOD 0 0 0 0 0 CONNETQUOT 6 8 7 0 21
James Cappola completed 9 of 15 passes for 200 yards and rushed for one touchdown to lead Connetquot, and Skip Walker caught three passes for 120 yards and two touchdowns.
Conn – Walker 70 pass rom Cappola (kick failed) Conn – Walker 30 pass from Cappola (Grable pass from Cappola) Conn – Cappola 1 run (Grable kick). Sept. 21- Pictures below from the Longwood – Connetquot game- photos by Joseph Sullivan
FLOYD 0 8 0 6 14 LONGWOOD 8 8 11 0 28
Heath Fitzsimmons rushed for 125 yards and two touchdowns and James Mancaruso made 10 tackles, including one sack, for Longwood. Longwood‘s defense totaled five sacks. Long – Fitzsimmons 25 run (Fitzsimmons run) Floyd – Sarvin 2 run (Picinich run) Long – Snead 2 pass from Halverson (Alston run) Long – Fitzsimmons 4 run (Alston run) Long – FG Liotta 31 Floyd – Moscato 19 pass from Picinich (run failed)
“It’s a strong rivalry. Very strong,” said Longwood football coach John Westberg. “We never have to get our kids up to play against Floyd.”
Nor do they apparently have to remind fans about the spirited William Floyd Parkway series. Longwood school officials estimated that 2,500 people turned out for last Saturday’s homecoming game against its closest rival. They said it was the largest football crowd in the school’s history.
The partisans did not reserve all of their applause for the homecoming court. Longwood‘s linebackers and offensive backs performed royally in a 28-14 victory. Heath Fitzsimmons, a 5-foot-9, 180-pound senior, carried the ball 30 times – “He’s a real strong kid,” Westberg said – for 125 yards and two touchdowns. Inside linebacker James Mancaruso (6-foot-2, 225) made 10 tackles. -Sept. 28
LONGWOOD 0 0 6 6 12 BRENTWOOD 7 7 7 7 28
Linebacker Andre Solomon had 10 tackles, one sack and one interception return for a touchdown as Brentwood won its first three games for the first time since 1981. Quarterback Vinny Torres was 5-for-8 for 106 yards passing and Sean Carpenter made five receptions for 106 yards. Mersailles Rodriguez is 9-for-9 on extra points. Brent – Carpenter 4 pass from Torres (Rodriguez kick) Brent – Torres 1 run (Rodriguez kick) Brent – Carpenter 35 pass from Torres (Rodriguez kick) Long – Halverson 7 run (pass failed) Long – Halverson 2 run (pass failed) Brent – Solomon 45 interception return (Rodriguez kick). Oct. 12
Sachem, Wyandanch and Comsewogue’s defenses yesterday had theirthree-game shutout streaks end. And with it went Comsewogue’s unblemished record. Sachem (4-0) edged Longwood, 15-12, on Dave Shanahan’s 5-yard run with 5:10 left. His score was set up by defensive back Fred Kemp’s 47-yard runback after Kemp intercepted a pass from quarterback John Halverson.
Sachem did sustain one a loss of sorts last week when Longwood broke up the Arrows’ season-long shutout streak. Longwoodquarterback John Halverson passed for one touchdown and ran for another. It took a fourth-quarter, five-yard scoring run by Dave Shanahan preserved Sachem’s winning streak.
“Longwood played a good game, and this is not to take anything away from them,” said Sachem coach Fred Fusaro, “but we had 185 yards in penalties called against us . . . I don’t think we were dealt with fairly.” Oct. 19
Lindenhurst recorded a 14-13 triumph over Longwood yesterday infootball. After Longwood went ahead 13-8 on a 12-yard run by BenAlston with 53 seconds left, Lindenhurst drove 77 yards in eight plays to win the game with 2 seconds left. John Drago took over at quarterback for the final drive and completed 7 of 8 passes for 77 yards, including the winner to Phil Getfield from 8 yards. LINDENHURST 0 0 0 14 14 LONGWOOD 7 0 0 6 13 Long – Alston 35 run (DeStefano kick) Lindy – Austin blocked punt recovery in end zone (Mohr pass from Senatore) Long – Alston 12 run (run failed) Lindy – Getfield 8 pass from Drago (run failed) Oct. 26
HIGH SCHOOL NOTEBOOKLongwood, Lindenhurst Deserving of Each Other: [SUFFOLK Edition]
Herrmann, Mark. Newsday, Combined editions; Long Island, N.Y. [Long Island, N.Y]. 30 Oct 1986:
Take the word of Longwood football coach John Westberg: Sachem and Lindenhurst will prove worthy of their unbeaten records when they face each other Saturday. And no one should know better than Westberg, whose team nearly spoiled the perfect records of both opponents in the past two weeks.
“I keep saying that we’re probably the best 1-and-4 team around,” said Westberg, after Longwood lost to Lindenhurst, 14-13, on a touchdown pass with two seconds left last Saturday.
A week earlier, the Lions had taken a 12-7 lead into the fourth quarter against Sachem, which had not allowed a point in three previous games. But Sachem rallied for a 15-12 victory.
So, Sachem and Lindenhurst will continue to pursue the League I title and Rutgers Trophy, emblematic of the best football team in Suffolk. Longwood is left to consider its close losses to strong teams.
“We’re very thin,” Westberg said. “We have 15 kids who play both ways. They’re getting pounded all game. So, when it gets down to the end of the game and it’s time to suck it up, it’s hard for them to do.”
Still, Longwood got hardy performances last Saturday from sophomore tailback Ben Alston, who scored what appeared to be a winning touchdown with 53 seconds left, and senior linebacker James Mancaruso.
As for Saturday’s first-place matchup – 2 p.m. at Lindenhurst – Westberg said that Lindenhurst’s quick, aggressive line should provide an interesting counterpoint to Sachem’s big, strong front wall.
“I’d like to see that game,” the Longwood coach said. Instead, he will lead his team against Ward Melville, which beat Floyd last week on Rich Blanco’s touchdown reception with 11 seconds left.
Longwood Tops Pat. – Medford On Field Goal: [NASSAU AND SUFFOLK Edition]
Newsday, Combined editions; Long Island, N.Y. [Long Island, N.Y]. 09 Nov 1986:
Owen Sanford’s 30-yard reception from John Halverson with 4 1/2minutes remaining in the game set up kicker Chris Liotta’s 24-yardfield goal as Longwood beat Patchogue-Medford, 3-0, yesterday in football. Longwood held Patchogue-Medford to eight first downs and 95 yards of total offense and forced five turnovers. Middle linebacker Jim Mancaruso made 11 tackles and recorded one sack, and cornerback Brian Walker made two interceptions for Longwood. PAT.-MEDFORD 0 0 0 0 0 LONGWOOD 0 0 0 3 3 Long – FG Liotta 24
LONGWOOD 0 9 6 0 15 CENTEREACH 0 0 0 0 0
Sophomore Ben Alston rushed for 126 yards to lead Longwood, which held Centereach to 38 total yards in the second half and 140 for the game. Longwood took the lead for good on a safety when John Halverson tackled running back Willy Cresser in the end zone midway through the second quarter. Long – Safety (Cresser tackled in end zone) Long – Halverson 27 run (Liotta kick) Long – Alston 7 run (kick failed). Nov. 16
Its’s Tough to Find Glory In Football’s Trenches But two Brookhaven athletes consider playing the line as the thinking man’s choice – and recruiters agree: [SUFFOLK Edition]
By Mark Herrmann. Newsday, Combined editions; Long Island, N.Y. [Long Island, N.Y]. 26 Nov 1986
Grapple with burly counterparts – but don’t think about getting your hands on the ball. Sustain so many bruises every Saturday afternoon that Sunday will become a day of rest – whether or not you intended it that way.
Still, acclaim always seems to make an end run around you. Anyone who wants to become a lineman or linebacker knows that those are the facts of life along the line of scrimmage.
“If you get used to a position, you start to like it,” said Marc Kosciuk, who takes an advanced placement course in calculus and plays tackle on offense and defense for Miller Place. “There’s no glory in it, though.”
“A guy who plays this position has really got to love football,” said Longwood‘s inside linebacker Jim Mancaruso, who tackles physics and calculus books when he is not pursuing ball carriers. “A lot of guys wouldn’t be able to play it.”
But Mancaruso and Kosciuk, both honor students, prefer to think of the glamorless positions as thinking men’s roles. And both of these seniors have played their parts so well that their weekly physical expenses – sore muscles and black-and-blue marks – will pay off with college scholarships.
“I get a call just about every night,” said Kosciuk, who has heard from 30 colleges.
Mancaruso’s telephone is just as busy. “Usually, an assistant coach calls to make sure that I’m keeping his school in mind,” the Longwoodsenior said.
If their performances went unheralded, their skills did not go unappreciated by college coaches. Recruiters feel that both players have the size – Kosciuk is 6-4, 235 pounds; Mancaruso is 6-2, 230 – and speed – both can finish the 40-yard dash in 4.7 seconds – to play on Division I teams.
Although Longwood (3-5) finished five games behind League I champion Lindenhurst, opposing coaches called Mancaruso one of the league’s premier players. A three-year starter, he was named to the all-Suffolk team last season.
“It got to the point where most teams would run away from him,” said Longwood coach John Westberg. “They wouldn’t run up the middle. So, most of his tackles were made from sideline to sideline. But he’s got enough speed and quickness to do that.”
Mancaruso said that his fast footwork was an acquired skill. “I worked on it a lot in the off-season with the track coach,” he said of Tony Toro. “I had bad form, so he showed me a lot of things to do.”
The track coach pointed out the value of becoming limber. “I was doing too much lifting and not enough stretching,” said Mancaruso, who bench-presses 405 pounds.
His parents, Phillip and Lorraine, insist that weightlifting take a back seat to studying. “That’s just as important as football,” said the teenager, who will ask about business and pre-law majors when he visits Tulane and Syracuse Universities next month.
Kosciuk, who ranks among the top 10 percent in his class, has an accelerated academic schedule that brought him into physics class a year ahead of most classmates. He apparently is a quick study at tackle as well.
He never had played football until he joined the junior varsity in his sophomore year. “I wanted to play in junior high and ninth grade, but my father didn’t want me to play. A couple of my friends came over and talked him into it,” Kosciuk said.
John and Claudette’s son might be able to study engineering at no cost to his parents – thanks to his prowess as a tackler. He hopes to visit the University of Arizona and Stanford among other schools.
Miller Place coach Sal Passamano said that Kosciuk progressed quickly because he has a good grasp of the game and a strong, swift frame. The senior can handle 255 pounds with the challenging clean-and-jerk lifting motion.
“We double-teamed him at the line of scrimmage when we ran toward him,” said Hampton Bays coach Mike Diveris. “If we passed, we also assigned a back to him, so, in effect, we triple-teamed him. His speed was a real problem for us.”
Among opponents, Kosciuk was perhaps the best-known player on his team. So who says there isn’t any glory for a lineman?
“There is, if you play as well as he does,” Passamano said.
