One crucial yard gives Falcons victory

Riverdale head coach Joe Otero was begging, pleading even, for that one last first down.

His Falcons were clinging to a two-point lead with just over a minute to play and Riverdale was faced with a fourth-down-and-one situation at the Fieldston 30-yard line. Pick up the first down and the Falcons could simply run the game clock out and defend their King of the Hill crown. Come up short, and it would open the door for Fieldston to make one last strike at pulling out a last-second victory.

“Get me that first down,” Otero shouted to his offense. “I need one first down.”

Seconds later, there was Ryan Rosenzweig, Otero’s junior quarterback, sneaking behind his offensive lineman for that crucial yard, giving Otero that early Christmas gift and preserving the Falcons’ 16-14 victory over the Eagles at Fieldston last Saturday afternoon.

The win gives Riverdale (5-4) its second straight King of the Hill crown after they defeated both Fieldston and Horace Mann this season.  

“I knew I had to get it. There was no other option,” Rosenzweig said. “If we gave up the ball they would have had another chance to come back. It was big.”

It was also the swansong game for Riverdale senior Avery Hoffman, who was the soul of this Falcons team this season. A cancer survivor as a child, Hoffman was the driving force behind the Falcons this season and to go out with a win in his final game meant more than winning another King of the Hill trophy.

“This is more than just King of the Hill. It’s more than just the last game of the season, it’s the last game of my high school career,” said Hoffman, who ran in a pair of two-point conversions in the win. “So I wanted to leave it all on the field and I’m happy with the result.”

A big reason for the Falcons win was Zach Gronfein. The sophomore wide receiver and defensive back turned in a brilliant hat trick when he caught one touchdown pass, intercepted a Fieldston touchdown pass attempt in the end zone and recovered a Fieldston onsides kick with 2:40 left to play after the Eagles had closed within two points. So what was the highlight for Gronfein?

How about none of the above? 

“The touchdown was great, and the interception was great, but that last kneel was the highlight of my game,” Gronfein said, referring to the game’s final play when Rosenzweig simply kneeled to kill the final seconds off the clock. “Being able to send these seniors out on the right note, a lot of them won’t be playing football for the rest of their lives, they’ll never put the pads on for the rest of their lives. So to be able to send them out the right way it means everything to me. And being back-to-back King of the Hill, it’s all really special.”

After the two teams played to a 0-0 deadlock through the first half, Riverdale got on the board first when they opened the second half with a seven-play, 66-yard drive that was capped off by a 30-yard touchdown pass from Rosenzweig to Gronfein. When Hoffman added the first of his two conversion runs, the Falcons owned an 8-0 lead with 9:28 to play in the third quarter.

“We made some adjustments at halftime,” Otero said. “We knew we were hurting ourselves so we came out on the first drive in the second half and boom, boom, boom we come down and scored and that’s how we should have come out in the first half.”

On Fieldston’s following possession, the Eagles marched from their own 34 yard line to Riverdale’s 20. But just as it looked like the Eagles might find the end zone, Gronfein picked off a pass from Fieldston quarterback Jesse Cooper-Leary in the end zone to short-circuit the Eagles drive.

Fieldston finally got on the board on its next possession when bruising running back Josh Godosky rumbled into the end zone from 20 yards out and when Alexander Thorpe drilled the extra point, the Riverdale lead was 8-7 with 4:10 left in the third quarter.

The score remained that way until there was just 6:01 left in the game when Riverdale struck again, this time on a two-yard scoring run by Rosenzweig, and when Hoffman added the conversion run the Falcons had a 16-7 lead.

But Fieldston wouldn’t go away. After the Eagles went four-and-out on their next possession, the Eagles created a huge break for themselves when they blocked a Riverdale punt and recovered it at the Falcons’ 35-yard line with 3:21 to play. Three plays later, Cooper-Leary teamed with Tyler Kemp for a 36-yard touchdown pass and just like that the Eagles were within 16-14.

But Gronfein recovered the ensuing onsides kick, his final contribution of his stellar afternoon, and all that was left for the Falcons to do was pick up that one last first down that Otero so desperately wanted. And Rosenzweig was able to give it to him to secure the win.

“I tell you, Zach is definitely the future of the program,” Otero said. “He was a starter as a freshman and as a sophomore this year and we’re looking for big things from him next year.”

For Gronfein, it was his second King of the Hill crown in as many years. And while he cherished the trophy, he also wanted to pay tribute to Hoffman, who wore the maroon and white Riverdale football uniform for the final time.

“He is unlike anyone you’ll ever meet. The kid is a fighter,” Gronfein said. “You see him get trucked every play and he has a knee brace on and he’s hurt and he had mono to begin the season and he comes back and he’s a rock. We rely on him to do incredible things with the ball and essentially win us games.”

For Fieldston, which rebounded from last year’s 0-8 season to finish 5-4 this season, there was reason for optimism even in defeat.

“Every time we play them it’s a crazy game. That’s what makes the rivalry so great,” Fieldston head coach Gus Ornstein said. “Every time it goes down to the wire and crazy things happen. This hurts and this is not how we want to go out but look where we were last year. We lost eight games last year and if we’re being honest I didn’t think we’d win five games this year. So we got to be happy with that. We did some really good things and we had a really good year. But this was tough. It’s not how you want to end your season.”

The future looks bright for Fieldston which will return Godosky, Cooper-Leary, Pierce and Patrick O’Hagan and other core members of the team. But a victory would have helped ease the Eagles into the offseason.

“I think we’ve made huge steps moving forward even though we’re losing some guys (to graduation),” Godosky said. “We have so many guys lined up to fill in spots so I think we’re going to keep going up. But this was a tough loss.”

Before he walked off the field for the final time, Hoffman was asked what he was thinking in the final minutes of the game and how it felt to close out his career with a victory over his archrival. It was a storybook ending, he said.

“To be honest with you I couldn’t think of a more perfect way to end it,” Hoffman said. “It’s a close game against our rivals, Fieldston, and it’s come down to the last play of the game every year so this was the perfect way to end it. I’m going to miss this. This program has taught me more than just football, it’s taught me about brotherhood. I’ve made my best friends through playing Riverdale football. I couldn’t be happier.”