EM's Healy hurt more by watching loss

Robbie Healy was hurt.

East Meadow's dynamic wingback smacked his shoulder on the ground trying to defend Stacey Bedell on what turned out to be an 80-yard touchdown run. Right shoulder wrapped, he stood on the sideline and watched.

He watched as Floyd failed to convert on fourth down, giving his Jets the ball at the Colonials' 30, watched as Billy Andrle pushed through the Floyd defense, and kept on looking as his teammate and best friend, Dylan Curry, faked a handoff and cruised around left end to tie the game.

It wouldn't be enough, as East Meadow fell to Floyd, 54-47, in the Long Island Class I final at Stony Brook's LaValle Stadium, but the Jets proved one thing sunday night: For everything Healy has done to carry East Meadow, the team, at least for a few plays, did everything it could to carry him right back.

"He was hurting pretty good," coach Vinny Mascia said. "We actually had a couple of plays where we wanted him to throw the ball, but he couldn't do it. He played the whole game and I thought he held up pretty good today. I thought he played a great game."

Healy had 24 carries for 176 yards with one touchdown, added a catch for 31 yards and came back in after Curry's TD to punch in the two-point conversion. It would have been easy to get demoralized after he left the game, Curry said, but the quarterback had no plans to let his team go down without a fight.

"I knew once Healy went down, someone had to step up," Curry said. "When they would score, I'd see our team hanging its head, and I was fighting with them to keep our heads up."

It worked until a backbreaking TD pass put Floyd ahead for good, and until Curry, under heavy pressure, threw an interception to ice the game.

The pain from the shoulder was temporary, Healy said, and, though the loss would sting a little longer, he would not call the season a failure.

"We fought back," he said. "We came back. We were so close. We almost had it, but we came up short."