Sachem East’s storybook season came to an end Sunday afternoon.
William Floyd proved to be too much for the Arrows in a 61-27 loss in the Suffolk County Division I championship at Stony Brook’s LaValle Stadium.
Floyd (9-2) advances to the Class I Long Island championship for the fourth straight season, where they will play Nassau County’s Farmingdale next weekend at Hofstra University.
Sachem East (6-5), who made its first appearance in a football championship since its inception in 2004, was led by its workhorse Steven Casali, who had 38 carries for 264 yards and 4 rushing touchdowns. This season Casali finished with 253 carries for 1,906 yards and 20 touchdowns.
Trailing 21-6 in the final minute of the second quarter, Casali scored on a 12-yard rushing touchdown. East missed the two-point conversion attempt.
Floyd increased its lead to 28-12 after a 16-yard touchdown run from Chris Faison on the first series of the second half. Diamonte Corley made it 35-12 with a 59-yard touchdown run at 4:08 of the third.
Casali kept Sachem East’s hopes alive with an 88-yard rush and 3-yard rushing touchdown on the next series, but the cat-and-mouse scoring game only went so far for East since it trailed from the first quarter.
Corley struck again with another 59-yard touchdown run and Floyd quarterback A.J. Otranto threw his second touchdown pass, a 66-yarder, allowing the Colonials to put up 21 points in the third quarter.
“If we can’t stop them on defense, no matter what we do, at some point it’s going to cave in,” Sachem East coach Mark Wojciechowski said. “Unless we played better on defense we wouldn’t have success. They’re a great team and they took it to us today.”
Sachem East strung together its finest season in school history. Between last week’s improbable victory over Connetquot in the county semifinals and running the table as a sixth-seeded team in the playoffs for a division with the most parody on Long Island, the coaches and players will look back on 2012 as a fond season.
“Hopefully it carries over in part of the building of what we’re trying to do around here,” Wojciechowski said. “Do the right thing, the right way and hopefully it pays off in the end.”
As for Casali, he’s a shoe-in for the Hansen Award, presented to the top player in the county at next week’s Suffolk County Football Coaches Association Awards Dinner.
“I’ve been here a long time,” Wojciechowski said. “I have not coached or played with anybody ever who is any better than he is on every level, as far as a football player, a captain, a human being. He is an awesome kid. He makes me proud that I had an opportunity to coach him, know him.”
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Fourth and Long
- The 61 points allowed are the most allowed in program history for Sachem East, breaking the previous high of 57 set in last year’s county semifinals against Sachem North.
- Casali’s 264 yards are a single-game playoff rushing record for Sachem East.
- Sachem East is now 0-9 all-time against William Floyd.
- Sachem East scored 227 points this season, tying the program record set in 2004 and also allowed 281 points, a new program record.
-Words by Chris R. Vaccaro / Photos by Bob Sorensen