Danny Striano, Ray Costa lead Cold Spring Harbor to convincing win over Shoreham-Wading River in LI Class IV championship game

Tailback Danny Striano and quarterback Ray Costa were among the last members of the Cold Spring Harbor football team to walk off the turf at Stony Brook’s LaValle Stadium on Friday evening. They were able to do it without regrets. In the final game of their senior seasons, their performances helped lift the Seahawks back to Long Island’s highest perch.

Costa threw a pair of fourth-down touchdown passes and ran for a score and Striano rushed for 215 yards and three TDs as Cold Spring Harbor methodically dismantled Shoreham-Wading River, 42-20, in the Long Island Class IV championship game.

CSH (10-2) won its third Long Island championship and first since 2005. While rewarding for all the Seahawks, the moment was especially significant for Costa and Striano. Last year, when CSH won its first 10 games before a crushing loss to Seaford in the Nassau title game, Costa wasn’t the starting quarterback and Striano had missed the season with a fractured L-5 vertebra.

“That, to me, is the best feeling about [winning]. Since 2005, our football program hasn’t been great,” Striano said. “These last two years, we really developed.”

“Football was on a downslope a few years ago, and now we complete the turnaround by winning a Long Island title?” Costa said. “It’s amazing — the best feeling in the world.”

Cold Spring Harbor set the tone early against the Wildcats (10-2) and prolific quarterback Xavier Arline. It forced a punt on the first possession and then went on a seven-minute, 80-yard drive for a TD and two-point conversion. On several plays, Costa’s quick snaps caught the SWR defense trying to shift. He hit senior wideout Thomas Milana with a 12-yard fade for a score and Striano rushed for the conversion.

It was the beginning of grinding down the Wildcats. CSH drove for touchdowns on six of its first seven possessions.

“We wanted to keep their big-play guy off the field, we wanted to control the clock and we wanted to grind down the guys on the line,” third-year coach Jon Mendreski said. He can put checks next to all three: Arline rushed for 73 yards and a pair of TDs and threw for another, but the Wildcats had the ball for just 14:59 of 48 minutes and the Seahawks rolled up 389 total yards.

CSH landed the deciding blow with a pair of TD drives on either side of halftime. Taking over with 2:42 before intermission, Costa sustained the drive with a 12-yard pass to Milana on a third-and-9 and then hit leaping senior tight end Aidan Adomaites on fourth-and goal for a 7-yard TD and a 21-14 lead on the last play before the break.

The Seahawks went 65 yards on 12 plays in 6:40 on their next possession, with Striano taking it in from the 1.

“We were extremely motivated going into the second half after that touchdown [on the last play of the first half],” Striano said. “Everything was really working for us.”

“When we get rolling, it’s so much fun to play,” said junior Richie Striano, one of Danny’s three younger brothers on the team (they’re triplets). “When you’re winning and playing like that, there’s nothing better. We kept our foot on the gas and weren’t stopping.”

Danny Striano added TD runs of 38 and 2 yards before it was over. After returning from the back injury for this season, he missed three games with a knee injury before returning for the postseason. He also had three TDs when the Seahawks won their Nassau title-game rematch with Seaford a week earlier.

“I never played a football game like I did these last two,” he said.

Costa said that in an athletic ensemble like CSH, many players could have ended up making the key plays. Danny Striano thought it more than coincidence that several seniors did.

“It’s our last game. Being a senior, you have a little extra push to play your heart out because you know this is the last time you’ll ever step on the football field,” he said. “Myself, Aidan, Thomas, Ray — all the seniors stepped up today.”

Shortly before kickoff, Mendreski told the seniors to savor the game.  “I told them to take it all in and look around because, win or lose, this is special,” he said. “I’m thrilled that what they got to see was the setting for a win like this.”