Pat-Med Raiders Lick Wounds, Look To The Future

It wasn’t Patchogue-Medford’s day Saturday. A crisp November afternoon in Mastic Beach that started out promising, with a scoreless first quarter, ended in a lopsided 48-20 victory for the William Floyd Colonials in the Suffolk County Division I football playoffs.  

A blown coverage opened the scoring for Floyd as Eric Brust hit a wide-open Bill Kaastra with a 45-yard touchdown strike to make it 7-0. Then at the end of the first half Floyd turned an Anthony Lee interception at the Raiders’ 30 into another score to open up a 21-0 lead at halftime.

Pat-Med did its best to make a game of it, and were poised to cut into the lead in the fourth quarter when disaster struck. Kaastra jumped on a pass from Lee and took it all the way to the house for a pick 6 that ended a promising drive and made the score 41-7. The Raiders never stopped fighting, as Sam Campanella capped off a drive with an amazing legs-churning run, dragging several Floyd players into the endzone. Then, on two quick plays, Anthony Lee and Conor Coughlin went down the field for another score.

But for every scoring drive the Raiders put together, Floyd would answer right back. It just wasn’t Patchogue-Medford’s day.

Still. For Coach Jim Chiarello, he walked off the field with pride in his team, after the Raiders put together a nice 5-3 season that included a dominating 31-7 victory over this same Floyd team. In the end, the injuries were too much for the Raiders, Chiarello reflected.

“We did a lot of good things [this year], but we couldn’t keep up with the injuries,” he said. “We lost more guys and eventually it gets to you. We wear down. We had eight starters out.”

Also, Patchogue-Medford had begun to make it a habit late in the season of starting off sluggish on the offensive side of the ball.

“The last couple weeks we’ve been starting out too slow,” Chiarello said. “We hang in there and hang in there, but we didn’t do what we did earlier in the year offensively as far as getting points on the board. And after a while that catches up to you.”

Chiarello, who credited Floyd for the win and believes the Colonials will win the whole thing this year, circled the Kaastra touchdown as the swing play of the game.

“That pass play for the touchdown with the broken coverage? That hurt. That was bad,” he said. “And there was no need for it too. Just a lack of focus.”

Something the Raiders will get a chance to improve heading into next season as Chiarello assesses the 2014 team. The Raiders will lose Coughlin, Campanella and Lee to graduation, but will retain players like Michael Rivera and Dom Cassella, along with at least 15 other players heading into their senior year.

“We have a good group of juniors,” he said. “But I don’t know how much depth we’re going to have.”

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