Moving the ball on Garden City’s defense is an uphill battle. Just ask Calhoun’s offense.
On the first play of the Colts’ second drive, Zach Olson picked up a sack for a loss of four. On third-and-14 from Calhoun’s 8-yard line, Anthony Asaro bull rushed his way to the quarterback in the end zone for a safety.
“That gets everyone excited,” Olson said. “Our kickoff team did an amazing job of getting them down on the 12-yard line. When it all comes together with special teams and us on defense, that’ll really get everyone going early on in the game.”
Garden City’s defense imposed its will throughout the Trojans’ 51-7 win over Calhoun in Nassau Conference II football Saturday afternoon in Merrick. Garden City improved to 7-0 and extended its Long Island-record winning streak to 61 games.
With a win against New Hyde Park next Saturday, Garden City will tie Maine-Endwell for New York’s longest high school football winning streak.
“The defensive line is the most important part of our defense because we get pressure on a quarterback real quick,” Asaro said. “I wasn’t really thinking safety there, but just pushing my guy back. There’s no gap for the quarterback to step into if you push the line back into him and just wrap him up.”
Olson credited the defensive line’s success to its depth, which creates competition in practice for playing time. The 6-5, 285-pound Harvard commit is joined by James Sullivan, Luke Agrippina and Jake Brown in the starting lineup.
Angelo Cupani, Wolfgang Ullrich, AJ Haffner and Mark Escher all get mixed in, with Asaro seeing some snaps at defensive end in nickel packages, where he was when he picked up the safety.
“It’s hard to play at Zach’s size or any size to play on the line of scrimmage every play and some of them play on the offensive line, too,” coach Dave Ettinger said. “For guys like Zach and Jake Brown that play on the O-line and D-line to get a blow makes a huge difference.”
Calhoun (5-2), which entered Saturday averaging just over 30 points per game, was held to 169 yards of total offense. Justin Baiker and Joseph Ottomanelli each had an interception and Will Mattice forced a fumble that was recovered by Cupani.
Following the safety, Asaro caught a 29-yard pass from Brayden Robertiello to set Robertiello up for a 13-yard TD run, giving the Trojans a 16-0 lead with 4:52 left in the first quarter.
Asaro had seven carries for 86 yards and two touchdowns. He followed the blocking of Brown, Olson, Thomas Bacich, Willing Curley, Conor Fortney, tight end Jeffrey Finnell and fullback Owen Andersen and made a defender miss in the secondary for a 37-yard score to give the Trojans a 30-0 lead with 8:56 left in the first half.
“When you feel him running off you, putting his hand on your back, it’s really nice knowing that he’s going to go for a long touchdown,” Olson said.
Robertiello completed 9 of 12 passes for 106 yards and two touchdowns and added five carries for 69 yards and a TD. Merit Ruckh and Chris Desiderio each caught a TD pass.
Andrew Licari took a screen pass from Timothy Lynch 24 yards for a touchdown in the first half for Calhoun.
Ettinger praised Calhoun’s fourth-year coach Nick Rawls, who has the preseason ninth-seeded Colts near the top of the Conference II standings with one week left in the regular season. Rawls said he is excited to have the program moving in the right direction, but facing a team like Garden City is a reminder of what the Colts aspire to achieve.
“They just do such a nice job at Garden City, Ettinger and all of his coaches, and they’ve been doing it for so long,” Rawls said. “You’d love to have even a little bit of the success that they’ve had. They do it so consistently year in and year out.”
Matt Lindsay is a high school sports reporter who joined Newsday in 2022 after graduating from Stony Brook University.
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