51.0°,
Overcast Local flag football team secures second championship win
Lynbrook’s fifth grade flag football team won their championships for the second year in a row earlier this month.
Kids from Lynbrook, Franklin Square, and Garden City joined together, under the leadership of Kenny Hernandez and Michael Molinari, to stay undefeated during this flag football season. After winning the championships last year, Hernandez and his co-coaches entered this season with the goal of winning again. Going up against 16 other flag football teams, the Lynbrook team remained victorious.
“We breezed through our first three games,” Hernandez said. “And then the championship. We won 14 nothing.”
Although the main goal of this season was to continue the championship streak, Hernandez said that he wanted to make sure that the athletes were also having fun. He noted that everyone on the team are friends and it’s a “great group of athletes and parents.”
After winning the championship, the team celebrated at Runyon’s in Seaford.
“The overall score of the four games we played on playoff day was 90 to 6 points,” Hernandez said. “We only lost one touchdown.”
The team is not affiliated with the Lynbrook School District, but rather it was Hernandez’ own project. He said that his kids used to play for the Lynbrook Titans and they had a group of friends who wanted to play flag football in between sport seasons. So this sparked the idea of the team, which runs from February to April.
“And then one of our friends moved out to North Plainedge. And also North Massapequa and he continued to play with us,” Hernandez said. “And a couple of our friends over at Franklin Square wanted to play with us as well.”
Hernandez said that having all the kids come back for the second year in a row helped contribute to their win because they all already had chemistry with one another. He said that he might try to go for their third win in a row next year and would like to add more players, but the team is currently at capacity.
