North football making gains

Valley Stream North High School’s football season ended last week at the hands of a familiar foe — Roosevelt High School — but with three consecutive trips to the Nassau Conference IV semifinals at Hofstra University, head coach Tom Schiavo is proud of his players.

Last season, the Spartans made it to the championship game against Roosevelt and suffered a 26-21 loss. In June, an overwhelming majority of that team graduated from North. At the end of this season, only seven seniors were on the team.

North was seeded toward the bottom of the conference in the preseason, Schiavo said, but was ultimately seeded ninth when the schedules were crafted. According to Schiavo, the low ranking drove his players to success. “They didn’t get to where they did by experience,” he said. “They were fueled by expectations and predictions.”

The number of seniors this season is far fewer than in a normal year. Schiavo said there are typically 25 to 30 students from each grade playing football at North, but this year’s senior class was an anomaly.

However, what the senior class lacked in numbers, they made up for with solid play. “What we didn’t have in quantity we certainly had in quality players,” Schiavo said, adding that next year’s team will have some big shoes to fill in key positions.

Schiavo’s young team started the year 3-1 and finished the regular season with a 5-3 record, good enough for the fifth seed in the Conference IV playoffs. The Spartans traveled to Locust Valley in the quarterfinals and won 41-27. Junior quarterback Joe Ruscillo tied a county playoff record by throwing five touchdowns in the win.

The Spartans then ran into Roosevelt in the semifinals and were eliminated from playoff contention for the third consecutive year by the Rough Riders. Schiavo, who has coached the Spartans for 16 years and has been a phys. ed. teacher at North since 1993, said he drives past Roosevelt High School each day on his way to work and added that they’re the team that sets the bar in the conference. “We’ve got a lot of work to do if we want to compete with them on a yearly basis,” he said of Roosevelt.