The New York City team (in red) narrowly avoids being shut out by Long Island in the annual Empire Challenge game on Tuesday at Hofstra.
Before the start of Tuesday’s Empire Challenge football game, Tottenville’s Alvin Cornelius and Lincoln’s Jessel Jones discussed the possibility of combining for a number of touchdowns with Jones throwing them up and the Syracuse-bound Cornelius hauling them in.
The two didn’t live up to that ambitious plan, but they did combine for a significant touchdown that kept the city team from becoming the first group to suffer a shutout at the hands of Long Island in the annual Empire Challenge, an all-star game that pits the top seniors from the city against their counterparts from Long Island that benefits the Boomer Esiason Foundation to help fight cystic fibrosis.
With 3:04 left and the possibility of a shutout looming, Jones found Cornelius for an 18-yard touchdown in the corner of the end zone, somehow softening the blow of a 31-7 Long Island victory at Hofstra’s Shuart Stadium.
For the unsigned Jones, who led Lincoln to an undefeated season and PSAL city championship, it was a point of pride to get on the board and avoid the ignominy of getting shut out. Since the Boomer Bowl switched to a city versus Long Island format in 1998, no city team had ever failed to score a point, with the biggest blowout taking place in 2005, when Long Island topped the city team 44-7.
“It was important for us to score,” said Jones, who completed 5 of 13 passes for 53 yards while splitting time with two other signal callers. “We wanted to put New York City on the board. We’re prideful players. We wanted to get in the end zone. I threw a good pass. He made the catch. We had talked about scoring more but we wanted to get on the board and avoid the shutout.”
Instead of Cornelius and Jones lighting up the stat column, it was a running back from William Floyd – Stacey Bedell – who was the star of the game, rushing for 135 yards and three touchdowns on just 15 carries, including a 92-yard touchdown scamper in which he basically out-ran the entire city defense to extend the lead to 24-0 with 6:36 left in the third quarter. Lincoln coach Shawn O’Connor, usually on the other end of blowouts, admitted to having never seen Bedell in action, though Lincoln defensive end, Robert Kitching, who like Bedell is headed to UMass, had been talking him up to O’Connor during practice.
“But I got to see him today,” O’Connor said. “He’s good, obviously.”
Long Island amassed 340 yards of total offense while the city team produced just 215 yards with the Island team converting 3-of-3 red zone chances and the city just 1-of-2. Still, Cornelius was hard pressed to give the Long Island team much credit, blaming the city’s own mistakes on the loss. The city team turned the ball over three times compared to just one for Long Island.
“It really wasn’t what they were doing on defense,” said Cornelius, who caught three passes for 34 yards and a touchdown. “We just didn’t play like we practiced. We didn’t do what we were supposed to do.”
The city had several chances to score. Erasmus Hall’s Wayne Morgan returned the opening kickoff of the third quarter 41 yards, and the city team eventually drove down the field, but on a fourth-and-goal from the Long Island 1, Lehman’s David White was stopped on a run up the middle by Long Island’s Tom Diubaldo. That was a snapshot of the city’s lack of success in the red zone on Tuesday.
