Offense Ready To Strike On Sunday November 15th the Garden City Thunder O’Connor 8s played host to a NCYFL play-off game at Stewart Field. The opponent was the always tough and physical Farmingdale Hawks. Garden City had retained home field advantage due to their number one seed in the play-offs. The winner of the confrontation would have the opportunity to play Massapequa in the Nassau County Championship who had earlier avenged an earlier season loss against Mineola.

With a standing room only crowd at Stewart Field the Farmingdale Hawks won the opening toss and elected to receive. A bend but do not break defense of the Garden City Thunder did allow Farmingdale to move the ball down the field. One inside the 20 however, the Garden City secondary began to flex their muscles. Hard hits by Harry “The Hit Man” Murphy and Jack “Be Nimble Watch Me Stick” Cobb forced Farmingdale to turn the ball over on downs. The Thunder offense took over and began to establish a formidable drive themselves. The offensive line began to assert itself on the line of scrimmage. Fierce blocking by Bobby “Not Cobby” Lehan , Aidan “Not O’Connor” McDonagh, Angelo Demiris, Brian “Rollin’ And “ Boland, and Patrick “I Hit Hardy” Ilardi enabled the Thunder offense to advance the ball inside the Farmingdale ten yard line. Sean “Beachy” Tariche powered the ball in to make the score 7-0. Now it was time for the defense to get the ball back. The hard hitting line comprised of Christian Genussa, Donald Byrne, James Affronti, Nate Fridrich, and Dylan “Happy Meal” McDonald forced Farmingdale to punt. The offensive quickly began moving the ball deep into Farmingdale territory. Colin Hart was able to break free and sprint to the end zone to make the halftime score 14-0.

Shuffle to Make the Tackle On To the Championship In the second half the Thunder maintained possession of the ball for over 20 minutes! Jack Muldoon’s flawless play calling enabled the Thunder offense to move the ball at will. Another stalwart drive ended in the end zone with Sean Tariche’s second touchdown of the game. The defense intended to keep Farmingdale off the scoreboard and was able to do that due to an aggressive secondary of Justin Coppola, Colin Hart, Justin Hessler, and Trevor Yeboah-Kodie. The front 6 of Jack Ryan, Matthew McGovern, Liam Griffith and Aidan O’Connor ensured that Farmingdale never made it to the end zone on this Sunday afternoon. When the final whistle blew the Garden City Thunder had secured a 21-0 victory over a tough Farmingdale team. The win ran their record to a perfect 9-0 and reserved them a spot in the championship game on Sunday 11/22.

At the time of print the only two teams still playing in Garden City are the Garden City High School Varsity team and the Garden City Thunder 8s. The NCYFL Championship will be held at Mitchell Field on Sunday 11/22. Kick-off is 10am. Massapequa has a team in every age group in the championship game. Massapequa has close to 900 players in their program. Garden City had 210 registrants this year. Massapequa hand picks a travel team for each age group and the remaining players compete amongst each other in a town league. Garden City has two teams for each age division and all boys play against other towns. David and Goliath II is sure to be a fun and exciting game. We are asking the community to come out and support us by making the short trek over to Mitchell Field at 10:00am on Sunday. Thank you to all the Garden City Thunder players and coaches who have dedicated their time and effort to teach and learn the great game of football this season. GO THUNDER!!!!