Beating West Islip Ranks Among Top Games Ever

It's quite a task to face the No. 1 team in the country in any sport, at any level. What Sachem North did on the lacrosse field Wednesday afternoon is a testament to their cause in bringing Sachem back to where it used to be at the table of Long Island's premier athletic powerhouses.

If you scroll through the history logs of championships during the 1980s and 1990s, Sachem is splattered across the pages for just about every sport. From league titles to Long Island championships and the special teams that won New York State titles, Sachem was a premier district when it came to winning sporting events.

That consistent winning flavor took a dive after the infamous split in 2004-05. Some teams managed to win and others have picked up random titles, but not a single program other than the Sachem East girls basketball program this year has captured major attention. Until Wednesday, that is.

The atmosphere at West Islip High School was perfect. Over cast in the sky, slick conditions on their new turf that sports a massive Lion at mid-field. Longtime Sachem coaches Tony Petillo and Mark Wojciechowski were in attendance on the sideline to support the Arrows. West Islip athletic director Tim Horan stood on the other end of the field with his team. The connection? He and the Lions beat up on Sachem and Wojciechowski in the 1985 Suffolk County football title game. The rivalry has deep roots.

Sachem North football had a magical 10-1 run in 2009, but even those coaches will tell you that they expect to be that dominant every year. That coaching staff is made up of mainly Sachem graduates, who know how to win and who won when they were athletes with the Black & Gold. To go 10-1 is impressive, but they'd take a county title any day.

With lacrosse, that winning mentality has always been there as well - both at East and North, who are coached by former Sachem graduates. When North lost in the Suffolk County quarterfinals last spring it showed the program was edging back. It only helped that the football program had a splendid fall, which has lead to this spring.

North lacrosse beat The Potomac School, a respected Virginia private institution, over the weekend, 17-3, and that caught some people's eyes. But a 13-12 sudden-death overtime win against the No. 1 school in the nation puts your program on a different level. Sachem North and Ward Melville are the only Suffolk County schools to beat the Lions in nearly a decade. They have players attend Duke, North Carolina and Syracuse like most schools have students go to Suffolk County Community College each year. It's just natural.

So when Michael Andreassi bolted towards the back of the net to feed Phil Schaefer a pass that bounced beautifully off his stick and past goalie Kyle Turri with 2:47 left in overtime, it put a shock wave through Sachem country. The sleeping beast is awake again.

With 14 games left, including an important battle against Syosset Saturday night in Massapequa under the lights, it's far too early to get excited about any sort of playoff push, but wins like this don't happen every day. Enjoy the season, because we're in store for something special.

Here's a look at some of the other top wins in school history:

1. 1977 Suffolk County football championship: Thanks to a late-game interception by John Matheis, Sachem sealed a 21-16 win for the Flaming Arrows over Patchogue-Medford and marked the first major title in school history. Fred Fusaro credits Matheis' interception as a critical factor in possibly saving his career as a head coach and propelling Sachem to glory for another 20-plus years.

2. 2009-10 Suffolk County basketball championship: Local papers lead with headlines about North Babylon's Bria Hartley and her career-high 51 points, but the bottom line is that Kristen Doherty and the East girls basketball team won the game, 71-69. The girls went on to win a Class AA New York State title the same year.

3. 2005 Long Island baseball championship: The newly constructed Sachem East wasn't even a year old before it won its first Long Island title on the diamond. In fact, it was the Island title Sachem baseball had ever won - even with legendary coach Bill Batewell at the helm for all those years before. The baseball team, led by a talented group of future college ball players beat East Meadow, 5-1. Billy Alvino, who is a minor league player in the Detroit Tigers' organization was an instrumental part of that team.

4. 1993 New York State lacrosse championship: Rick Mercurio and his boys had battled for years against Ward Melville to get out of Suffolk County and on to bigger and better things. In 1993 that finally happened and Sachem put its stamp on the state by beating Fayetteville-Manlius, 9-7.

5. 2009 Week 1 football: It might be a regular season game like the lacrosse team's win against West Islip, but North's 17-14 Week 1 victory over William Floyd will go down as one of the most important victories in Sachem's modern era. In the most unlikely situation, rookie kicker Travis Nardello chipped a 30-yard field goal through the uprights with less than three seconds remaining. Sachem didn't lose again until it faced Floyd in the Suffolk County title game, but the 2009 group recorded the most wins in school history, rushed for more yards than any other team in school history and scored the most amount of points, as well.