Brooklyn Sweeps: FDR and Eagle Academy win respective city titles

December 2, 2014 By Rob Abruzzese Brooklyn Daily Eagle

The FDR Cougars won the school’s first ever PSAL Bowl Conference title, beating MSIT 22-14 at Lincoln High School on Saturday. Eagle photo by Rob Abruzzese

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The season couldn’t have started much worse, but it couldn’t have finished much better.

After starting the year with two loses in the first two games, the Franklin D. Roosevelt Cougars refused to quit and turned it around to win their next 11 games. The team’s victories included a 22-14 win over McKee/Staten Island Tech (MSIT) to win the Public School Athletic League (PSAL) Bowl title at Lincoln High School in Coney Island on Saturday.

“It’s been crazy,” senior running back Tristin Thomas said, reflecting on his season. “We were 0–2, and then we just popped back up. From the third game, we just started going ham.”

FDR won its third game against Tilden 44-6. From then until the PSAL final, the Cougars averaged nearly 35 points per game, while holding opponents to just eight. Along the way, they beat tough rivals like Lafayette and Grady with ease. Finally, in the championship game, they got revenge against MSIT — one of the teams that beat them early on.

“We had a bad start, bad communication,” said quarterback Kaseem Morrison. “Then we just worked our way up — gained trust and we went on from there. We just sparked. We sat down, talked, discussed our problems to work on, and we worked on our issues.”

FDR led for most of the first half until MSIT’s Ibrahim Tayeh scored on a one-yard run with 1:12 left to tie it at 6-6. The Cougars immediately answered back and got the ball all the way to the nine-yard line with two seconds left after Nadir Hassan hit Thomas with a 41-yard pass.

With time nearly expired, the players raced down the field and spiked the ball so they could get in one more play before the clock read zero. However, they were called for an illegal procedure and penalized five yards. When they finally got the play off, Morrison threw a 14-yard touchdown pass to Monrico Cummings to go up 14-6 headed into halftime.

MSIT coach Anthony Cialdella was furious at the series of events and demanded that FDR be called for an illegal man downfield on the last play, but the refs let it stand. That gave FDR momentum, heading into to the second half.

“That was huge, going into halftime with a lead like that,” FDR coach Paul Klyap said.

MSIT managed to tie the game at 14-14 in the fourth quarter when Aaron Rubenstein scored on a two-yard run following a 63-yard run by Tayeh that got the ball to the one. MSIT gave FDR a gift on the ensuing kickoff, though, when they failed an onside kick attempt and gave the Cougars the ball at the 50. They took advantage of it when Morrison scored on a 34-yard run to go up 22-14.

The win earned FDR its first Bowl Championship in the school’s history.

“It’s great,” Thomas said. “We’ll talk about this 50 years from now. Hopefully, I’ll go to college, and I’ll talk about this. I’ll never forget this championship, ever.”

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The day after the Cougars won the Bowl title, the Eagle Academy Eagles made history when they won the PSAL Cup division title, beating Stuyvesant 34-23 at Lincoln on Sunday, in the school’s first year with a varsity football program.

Sophomore Remell Redd, who ran for 201 yards and recovered a fumble during the game, scored on a 38-yard touchdown run with just over a minute to play in the game, capping off an unlikely season.

Sophomore Tymere Wilson, 105 yards and a touchdown; senior Claude McCammon, 91 yards and a touchdown; and junior Jamal Trotman, 30 yards and two touchdowns; all contributed to a ground game that overpowered Stuyvesant.