By CHRISTOPHER BARCA
Flushing Coach Jim DeSantis wasn’t sure his team could pull out a victory against John F. Kennedy and its mammoth defense Friday.
“Their defensive line is big. I was worried that we would get pushed around a bit,” he said. “This is the beginning of a tough stretch and tonight was a make or break game.”
Consider Flushing made.
Running back Andrew King, quarterback Jason Gonzalez and a strong defense of its own dominated Kennedy on both sides of the ball, propelling Flushing to a 26-13 victory in PSAL City Championship division football in the Bronx.
“They kicked our [butts] out there tonight in every way possible,” said Kennedy Coach Andy Lancberg, whose team had won three straight. “We’ve got a mediocre .500 record now and tonight we played mediocre. The kids just didn’t show up tonight, they were stagnant and slow.”
King took advantage of Kennedy’s sluggish play, as the senior running back torched the Knights (3-3) for 168 yards rushing on just 15 rushes. That included a 35-yard touchdown scamper filled with broken tackles and juke moves with four minutes remaining in the opening quarter.
Even though King averaged just over 11 yards a carry and ran hard all night, needing multiple defenders to bring him down on most carries, he believes he doesn’t deserve much credit for his team’s blowout victory.
“I just complement the rest of my team, I’m one-eleventh of this team so I try to get one-eleventh of this team’s job done,” said the star ball carrier. “But it was the offensive line that really stepped up big tonight and let me run well; they were impressive.”
Impressed might be an understatement in terms of DeSantis’ thoughts of his men in the trenches. Once worried about how they might handle Kennedy’s size up front, he sees no reason not to trust them now.
“They kicked the behind of the biggest defense we’ve seen so far. We were by far the most physical,” DeSantis said. “I’ve never seen them work and play this hard. They were absolutely incredible.”
While the offense may have been responsible for lighting up the scoreboard, the Flushing defense was just as successful. It forced key turnovers and held Kennedy scoreless until the 3:50 mark in the fourth quarter.
The Flushing defensive line stopped the Kennedy rushing attack behind the line of scrimmage a dozen times and Kennedy quarterback Anthony Cruz was sacked twice and hurried on nearly every throw. He also fumbled on Kennedy’s own 10-yard line after being gang tackled, as Flushing defensive lineman Daryl Webster recovered at the 1, setting up a Gonzalez quarterback sneak for a late third-quarter score.
“We all stepped up out there and played as hard as we practiced,” Webster said. “We wanted that shutout, but our second team defense works just as hard as we do in practice and they deserved to get out there and play a quarter.”
The win gives Flushing a 4-2 record heading into a difficult matchup with rival Campus Magnet, but DeSantis believes that Friday’s victory can only lead to good things in the future.
“We were able to get a big win today after our best week of practice,” he said. We’re looking forward to another great week of work and hopefully wins start to snowball from there.”
