Bruised. Battered. It didn\u2019t matter. <\/p>\n
Missing two of its top stars, the top-seeded Garden City football team relied on a bevy of players to shoulder the load in its 27-12 win over No. 3 Long Beach in the Nassau Conference II championship game on Saturday at Hofstra. <\/p>\n
With the Trojans leading by eight and facing a third-and-9 late in the game, Angelo Cupani took a toss to the right and appeared to be headed for the sideline. The senior bounced off a tackler, spun back inside and carried a pile of defenders into the end zone for a clinching 12-yard touchdown with 56 seconds left. <\/p>\n
\u201cI saw the sideline and I was like, \u2018Oh, I\u2019ve got to cut it up,\u2019 \u201d Cupani said. \u201cI had all these guys on my legs and I just kept my feet moving, scored the touchdown and celebrated with my guys. At that point, we pretty much knew it was over.\u201d <\/p>\n
Max Siragusa hauled in an interception on Long Beach\u2019s ensuing drive to seal Garden City\u2019s 10th straight Nassau title and 30th overall. The Trojans extended their state-record winning streak to 65 games. <\/p>\n
Garden City (11-0) will face the winner of Saturday night\u2019s Half Hollow Hills East-East Islip game in the Long Island Class II championship game at noon on Saturday at Stony Brook University. <\/p>\n
Star running back Anthony Asaro suffered an ankle injury in Garden City\u2019s semifinal win over East Meadow and was ruled out for Saturday\u2019s game, so Merit Ruckh took Asaro\u2019s place as the Trojans\u2019 primary ballcarrier. He helped Garden City move the ball on its methodical opening drive, which ended in a 12-yard touchdown run by quarterback Brayden Robertiello. <\/p>\n
On the first play of Garden City\u2019s second drive, Robertiello faked a handoff, rolled right and threw a screen pass across the field to Ruckh, who had linemen Thomas Bacich, Jake Brown and Zach Olson in front of him. <\/p>\n
\u201cI ran behind my linemen, and when I got to the open field, I did my thing,\u201d Ruckh said. \u201cI saw the end zone and I said, \u2018There\u2019s no way I\u2019m going to get stopped.\u2019 \u201d <\/p>\n
Ruckh cut back to the middle of the field and followed a block from receiver Chris Desiderio for a 73-yard touchdown as the Trojans took a 13-0 lead with 11:35 left in the second quarter. <\/p>\n
Robertiello exited the game, grabbing at his lower right leg, later in the quarter after being tackled out of bounds. Brendan Benn stepped in at quarterback and the Trojans continued their march down the field. <\/p>\n
Benn handed to Ruckh, who pitched the ball to Desiderio on a double reverse for a 9-yard touchdown run to give Garden City a 20-6 lead with 37 seconds left in the first half. <\/p>\n
Before the end of the drive, Robertiello had his helmet on and appeared to be ready to re-enter the game, but he didn\u2019t play the rest of the way. <\/p>\n
\u201cHe told me he was ready to play, but we just didn\u2019t think it was the smart thing to do with where the game was at,\u201d coach Dave Ettinger said. <\/p>\n
Zack Silva caught two touchdown passes from Charlie Conway for Long Beach, including an 8-yard score with 6:12 left in the fourth quarter. Brown sacked Conway on the Marines\u2019 two-point try, keeping the score at 20-12. <\/p>\n
Then Ruckh, Owen Andersen and Chase Kraus marched the Trojans down the field before Cupani\u2019s touchdown capped an 11-play, 82-yard drive that spanned 5:16. <\/p>\n
Long Beach finished the season 8-3 and reached the county final for the first time in 39 years. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe knew it would be a four-quarter game,\u201d Cupani said. \u201cWe\u2019ve been saying all week that Long Beach is the team that would give us the hardest time.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Matt Lindsay is a high school sports reporter who joined Newsday in 2022 after graduating from Stony Brook University.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bruised. Battered. It didn\u2019t matter. Missing two of its top stars, the top-seeded Garden City football team relied…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":65765,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[39275,951,947,34797,131,133,132],"class_list":["post-65764","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-long-beach","tag-garden-city","tag-high-school","tag-hs-football","tag-hs-gamer","tag-long-beach","tag-long-beach-headlines","tag-long-beach-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65764","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65764"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65764\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65765"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}