It was a dark and stormy night, and cold, too. But somehow, a grandstand full of Garnet supporters turned out to watch Rye play its best two-way game of the season in turning the tables on last year’s Section 1 champions, 21-19.
By Mitch Silver
It was a dark and stormy night, and cold, too. But somehow, a grandstand full of Garnet supporters turned out to watch Rye play its best two-way game of the season in turning the tables on last year’s Section 1 champions, 21-19.
Not only did the victory send the Garnets into the title game against unbeaten Yorktown at Mahopac High this Saturday at 7, it avenged last year’s loss to this same Somers team in the final game of the season. But it wasn’t easy.
First, Andrew Livingston had to throw two first-half TD passes, one for five yards to Drew Abate to tie it at 7-7 and the other a 32-yard drifter to Tim DeGraw — who out-jumped two defenders at the goal line — to nose the locals ahead at the half, 14-7.
Then the defense had to rise to the occasion to stop the vaunted Tuskers’ attack. Coming off a smashing 45-0 quarterfinal win over Walter Panas a week earlier, the visitors took the second-half kickoff and pounded away at Rye’s D.
One sequence was typical of the game: with half the third quarter gone, a measurement by the officiating crew showed Somers had third-and-an-inch at the Rye 36. Then a motion penalty sent Somers back five yards. They ran into the middle and another measurement showed less than a yard needed for the first down. The Tuskers went for it, and the Garnets gang-tackled the ball handler to turn away the threat.
Good thing they did, because a 65-yard Somers pass play to Tyler DeVito with 5:30 left in the period made the score 14-13. Now came the game’s pivotal play: the point after touchdown. There wasn’t one, because the snap was misplayed and a quartet of Garnet and Black defenders smothered the kicker.
Rye, ever opportunistic, proceeded to march the ball down the field. A couple of short Chase Pratt runs set up a pair of Livingston quick openers over the middle. But he was also sacked twice, leaving the Garnets with a 4th-down decision: Go for it at about the enemy 30 or kick and try to pin the Tuskers deep?
Coach Dino Garr, nothing if not a riverboat gambler, told the boys to roll the dice. Livingston hit Abate on a curl pattern at the left sideline to gain four more downs and, a minute later, took it in himself for the winning touchdown on a one-yard sneak. Abate’s all-important PAT kick sailed easily through the uprights. 21-13.
Somers wasn’t through. As the final period began they once more worked the ball into the Garnets’ red zone. The Tuskers’ leading rusher, Tim Fazzinga, plunged from the two to make it 21-19. But when QB Nick Lombardo tried to take it in, for two there was DeGraw, now playing defensive back, to stop him short of the line with nine minutes still on the clock.
A 13-yard wind- and rain-soaked punt set Somers up in Rye territory midway through the fourth stanza, but defenders Drake Turcotte, Jimmy Timmings, Patrick Hull, Chase Pratt, Roger Paganelli, Will Gladstone, Jahil Ricketts, and Marco Dellicolli were once more up to the task. Turcotte forced a fumble on a 4th-and-14 reverse, kicked it inadvertently for nearly 30 yards, and fell on it at the Somers 30. Rye then ran out the clock.
Livingston’s 182 yards on 12-21 passing means he needs only 161 yards in the title game to pass Briarcliff’s Rob Higle and become Section 1’s most prolific passer ever.
