Kennedy magic wears off against Erasmus

Kennedy players P.J. Franklyn and Chiz Umunakwe sat slumped on the Knights’ bench, tears creasing their faces. Most of their Kennedy teammates had already moved on to the locker room but the two seniors and best friends were not ready to see their careers at Kennedy come to an end just yet.

But as they sat on the bench, trying to milk a few more minutes before they would take off their Kennedy jerseys for the final time, the scoreboard a few yards behind them told the sad tale for the Knights. It read: Erasmus Hall 38, JFK 8, and with that the Knights’ magical season had come to an abrupt end in the Public School Athletic League (PSAL) quarterfinals at Sid Luckman Field in Brooklyn.

The Knights (7-4), who actually had jumped out to an 8-0 lead to open the game, were ultimately done in by a six-minute span in the second quarter, which saw Erasmus (9-1) score three touchdowns to take a 20-8 lead at halftime. It was a defensive breakdown the Knights could never recover from.

“We were very confident coming into the game and I still felt that way halfway through the game,” Kennedy head coach Augie Tieri said. “If we execute we win and we just didn’t execute.”

The Knights came into the game riding the crest of a five-game winning streak with their last loss coming back on Oct. 8 when they dropped a 40-6 decision to this very same Erasmus team. But when Umunakwe galloped eight yards for the game’s first score with 8:45 left in the first quarter, it appeared the Knights were not going to be an easy mark for the Dutchmen this time around.

And when the first quarter ended with Kennedy still leading 8-0, and the Knights defense seemingly rising to the occasion, you got the feeling a different ending to the script was about to be written this time.

But there is a reason Erasmus came into the matchup as the PSAL football playoff’s No. 2 seed. The Dutchmen had lost just once all season – a 44-42 loss to No. 1 seed Curtis on October 29 – and are gunning for a rematch with Curtis in these playoffs. To do that they needed to get by Kennedy and they proceeded to do just that in the second quarter when Dutchmen quarterback Aron Cruickshank and wide receiver Sean Ryan teamed for a pair of touchdowns with Cruickshank running for another score and all that solid work the Knights defense had turned in in the first half suddenly became a 20-8 hole at halftime.

“We felt great when we were up 8-0. We felt like we were going to win it all,” Kennedy junior running back Mario Agyen said. “But that second quarter was the backbreaker. After they scored everyone’s heads were down and we started losing momentum.”

All about execution

Unfortunately for the Knights, their fortunes got no better in the second half as Erasmus added yet another Cruickshank-to-Ryan touchdown pass for a 26-8 lead before a pair of fourth-quarter scores put the painful finishing touches on Kennedy’s season.

“I was really proud of our coaching staff. I thought we did a great job of preparing our guys for what they were going to do,” Tieri said. “But it came down to execution as it always does. I thought the defense executed really well and I was really proud of their effort. I don’t think they could have done a better job than what they did. But offensively I thought we fell short. I thought our execution was poor. I think we prepared them and I think they understood what they were going to do defensively and ultimately we just didn’t execute.”

Successful season

Despite the loss, Tieri and his team defined their season as a success as the Knights fell just two victories shy of a trip to Yankee Stadium for the PSAL city championship game. 

“This season was an absolute success. I’m so proud of the boys, I’m so proud of the coaching staff from top to bottom,” Tieri said. “The support of the administration and the entire school community, I just felt like it was a culmination of all our hard work to get to this point and I’m just really proud of the season that we had.”

Tieri got a little more emotional when asked what it felt like to coach Franklyn and Umunakwe, two program cornerstones, for the final time.

“I don’t look at them as my players, I look at them as my family,” Tieri said. “I told both of them they can come back and coach with me when they finish their college careers. And right now my main focus is to get them into great colleges. Now that the season is over, 100 percent of my effort is going into that because they both deserve to go to really good colleges.”

While both Franklyn and Umunakwe were too distraught to talk following the game, Tyreek Noble, a senior defensive stalwart, said he was proud of how far the Kennedy program had come in this, his final season.

“I think people had forgotten about Kennedy,” Noble said. “It’s been three years since we’ve been to the playoffs and to be honest people thought we would only win two games this year and we won seven. We proved a lot of people wrong. But it was a great year. I’ll never forget my senior year of high school. But it’s tough to walk way.”

But Noble, Franklyn, Umunakwe and the rest of the Kennedy seniors can walk away knowing they have put the once-dominant Knights program back on the city’s football map. And it’s a place Tieri says Kennedy will remain.

“I think we are already running and we’re going to keep on running,” Tieri said. “We have a really young team. We have a really young base to this varsity team. I feel really good about the youth that we have on this team and the future is bright. We are back and here to stay.”