The tackle was made by Ethan Yedvab, the whistle blew, and the eruption was on.
The Roslyn High School football team, a combo squad with Friends Academy, had not enjoyed this feeling for seven long years.
It had been since 2016 that the Bulldogs tasted the sweet sensation of success and Yedvab was ready to celebrate as soon as the Jericho High School runner was tackled in overtime of Roslyn’s 22-20 double overtime win Saturday.
“I saw the QB rolling left, I shot through the gap and just tried to hit him,” Yedvab said. “And then I just got up and it was the most incredible feeling, finally, to get that win we’ve been working so hard for.”
For the Bulldogs, who broke an 18-game losing streak, this win was a long time coming. After not gaining a victory in 2017, the program did not field a varsity team in 2018-19, first-year head coach Kevin McKeown said, and there was no season in the fall of 2020 because of Covid.
The 2020 games were played in the spring of 2021, with Roslyn only fielding a junior varsity program, as the school sought to rebuild, with the return to varsity official in the autumn of that year.
“It was very difficult because you had ninth graders who really should’ve been on JV that year, playing varsity because we didn’t have enough for a JV team,” said McKeown, then an assistant. “So you’ve got freshman all over the field, getting banged up and still playing, and then we were getting blown out most games.
“It wasn’t easy to keep the kids spirits up.”
“It was really difficult, because the other teams were so much bigger and stronger than us,” said senior defensive/offensive lineman Charlie Heller. “We tried our best to stay together and fight together, and kept telling ourselves that our day will come.”
But slowly, things started to get better for the Bulldogs. Last season they were in some close games, even taking a 17-0 lead over Herricks before falling, 19-17, with the winning points occurring on the game’s final play.
This year, with upperclassmen like Heller, Yedvab and Justin Vishnick, the Roslyn players thought a win was coming.
“We were pointing to (last week) as the one we could get, because we thought we matched up well with them,” said Yedvab, a running back/defensive back who took over at quarterback when an arm injury felled teammate Sean Shallat.
Still, Saturday’s triumph didn’t come easy. After a scoreless first half, Jericho took a 7-0 lead early in the third quarter, and Heller admitted he had a “here we go again” thought going through his noggin.
But late in the fourth quarter the Bulldogs tied the game on a pass from Yedvab to Frank Moscati to send it to overtime, where after the teams traded touchdowns, Shallat ran it in from five yards out. The two-point conversion put Roslyn up 22-14.
Then the Jayhawks scored on their first play of the next drive, setting up the 2-point try that Yedvab snuffed out.
“I’ve never been so happy to see someone fly through the air,” Heller said of the final stop. “It was just the greatest feeling ever, seeing that tackle get made and knowing we finally won,” Heller said.
Monday at school was a very different experience for the Bulldogs players; Yedvab and Heller said they were met with a stream of classmates and teachers congratulating them on getting the 400-pound gorilla off their back.
“It’s been hard because kids say stupid stuff to us, like ‘so, how many points are you going to lose by this week'”? Heller said. “But today was great; everybody was talking about it, there was a buzz at school. Finally people were feeling good about us.”
McKeown said the team’s captains have been great leaders in keeping faith and confidence that good times would come.
And now that they have one win?
“We want two,” Heller said with a laugh.”Let’s get more than one.”
“It really felt like a come-together moment for everyone,” McKeown said. “Just a feel-good moment for the school and we all really needed it.”
