Of senior Justin DePietro’s five touchdowns in Carey’s Nassau Conference II football season-opening 34-26 comeback victory Thursday afternoon, the most impressive came on a snap by Long Beach’s offense.
On second-and-10 from their own 38-yard line, the Marines botched a snap that became an adventure. After two mishandled scoop attempts and several inadvertent kicks, a hard-charging DePietro pounced on the ball in the end zone to tie the game at 20.
The bizarre play was part of a dominant and decisive third quarter that saw the Seahawks — DePietro — score four times in 5:15 to turn a 13-point halftime deficit into a 14-point cushion that came in handy after Long Beach’s Brody Riedel scored late in the fourth.
“It felt like playing Madden where the ball just kept getting kicked down the field,” DePietro said. “I just keep chasing after it and couldn’t believe where it ended up. That was a crazy play.”
DePietro’s touchdown runs covered 5, 5, 7 and 27 yards behind the blocking of center Dara Milner, James Daddino, Vincenzo Caccavo, Nasir Mustafa, Matthew Lemite and Xavier Benz.
“As Justin goes, we go and today he was awesome,” Carey head coach Mike Stanley said of DePietro, who rushed for 134 yards and four touchdowns and also blocked a punt. “He put in a tremendous amount of work during the offseason and he’s just on a different level right now,” he added.
Long Beach, coming off its first-ever appearance in a county championship game, led 13-0 after the opening quarter and 20-7 at halftime thanks in large part to senior quarterback Brody Juan and Holy Trinity transfer Joe Henn.
Henn, a junior wide receiver, had three catches for 45 yards on the season-opening drive and capped it with an 8-yard scoring grab in the corner of the end zone. Juan, who played wideout last year, followed with a 67-yard touchdown run on its second possession.
“We did a lot of good things and also made mistakes,” Long Beach head coach Scott Martin said. “It was a hard-fought game. I thought we might have some trouble with fatigue and special teams, and we did. It’s the third straight game Carey blocked a punt against us.”
Senior Anthony DeMarco recovered the DePietro blocked punt at the Marines’ 18-yard line. Two handoffs later, the Seahawks had their first lead of 2026. It was 34-20 entering the fourth after DePietro’s longest run of the afternoon.
“We couldn’t get our defense off the field in the first half, but we did a much better job in the second half,” said Stanley, who lauded the two-way performance of senior quarterback/cornerback Sal D’Amato.
Long Beach drove 81 yards to make it a one-possession game with 4:28 remaining. It got the ball back inside Carey territory after Henn recovered an onside kick at the 44, but a 23-yard loss on the first snap gave the offense too much work to do.
“We’ll feel bad for one day and get back to work,” Martin said.
The Marines are home next Saturday against Kennedy; Carey hosts Baldwin for Homecoming. Both games kick off at 1:30 p.m.