This week’s practice for the 11-year-old Hicksville Crusaders focused mainly on the offense and the players responded with a 36-6 drubbing of the Franklin Square Warriors.
In the first home game of this season, quarterback Peter Capel opened the scoring with a completed pass to Julian Franco resulting in the Crusaders favor. Franklin Square was able to counter with their only score of the game early in the second quarter. That was the only six points that the Crusaders defense has allowed to date. Later in the quarter, Sean Lewis recovered a Warrior fumble giving the Crusaders great field position. It now became time for the Orange and Black offense to flex their collective muscles. Behind the blocks of Tom Fleming, Nick Savva, Taylor Collins and Matt Zwickel, running back McPartland took it home making the score 14-6.
From this moment on, the Crusaders defense, led by Nick DeLaney, Vincent Baretta, Stephen Ketelsen and Sean Lewis, channeled all their efforts on keeping Franklin Square’s offense contained.
Before the half ended, Ketelsen showed his agility by cutting and slashing through the Warriors defense and with one of his patented runs, dashed to the end zone for another score. McPartland was able to once again split the uprights making the score 22-6.
The half time show featured the Crusaders cheerleaders coached by Brianna Walters, Loren Burns, and Olivia Schmith. These 8- through 11-year-olds did a masterful job keeping the fans pumped and ready for the action that was still to come.
The second half had Hicksville controlling both sides of the ball. On defense they stood firm. On offense, they appeared to play inspired football. Julian Franco’s run near the end of the third quarter that resulted in a first down was a thing of beauty. T.J. Delfino, playing fullback, crashed through Franklin Squares line and took the ball all the way to the one-yard line. The next play saw him take a vicious hit jarring the ball loose. Jake Kinneman never panicked and recovered the ball in the end zone for Hicksville’s fourth touchdown of the game.
The fourth quarter saw Hicksville’s defense come up big once again. Patrick Rilling, Alex Pierce, Kieren Sullivan and Patrick Ospina all did their part with Ospina making a first rate tackle.
With only minutes left in the game, Delfino who would not be denied, took the ball on a 40-yard run for yet another Crusaders touchdown. After McPartland nailed his third try for the extra points, the score was 36-6 making the Crusaders record 2-0-1.
In this game, it was impossible to mention every player that had an impact. Just suffice it to say that this was a team win!
