Yeboah-Kodie savors the idea of one more title for Garden City

Don’t call it a swan song. Don’t say it’s a ‘Famous Final Scene.’ Don’t even hint that an ending is coming. Trevor Yeboah-Kodie will have none of that.

The dawning Garden City football season is expected to be the senior star’s last on the gridiron. He realized a dream when he committed this summer to Brown and a spot on its lacrosse team. Still he knows there is a lot left to savor. And the only ending he is contemplating looks just like his first two on the varsity — one that has the Trojans with a 12-0 record after capturing another Long Island Class II championship.

“Hopefully we could connect the strings and make it back to the Long Island championship. If we could do that, it would be pretty awesome,” he said. “That this would be the last season isn’t in the front of my mind. But knowing this could be my last year? It could make me want to win a lot — a lot — more.

“Lots of us on this team might not play football next year, so our drive to do things one more time together is big.”

Yeboah-Kodie is one of Long Island’s very best players, a two-way tour de force equally dangerous when deployed as a speedy and elusive running back or as a lock-down cornerback. He may not be the reason that the Trojans carry a 24-game winning streak, but he is one of the big ones. A spectacular 2017 season earned him a finalist’s spot for Newsday’s Thorp Award, given annually to Nassau’s top player.

He aims to top it, but that won’t be easy. He averaged more than 11 yards per carry and rushed for 1,264 yards and 26 touchdowns. Out of the backfield he averaged 31.5 yards per reception and took three of eight catches for touchdowns. He even threw for a score on an option. And Garden City coach Dave Ettinger says that the 6-foot and 180-pounder “has the best ball skills I’ve ever seen in a defensive back — no one has reacted to a ball in the air the way he does.”

He iced each of the past two title games with a late interception. His 92-yard return for a TD provided the final points of the 24-6 win over North Babylon last fall.

“I’m not missing a minute of a game this season,” Leslie Giordano, his mother, said. “The Long Island championship might be his last game.”

It’s not just the case for Yeboah-Kodie. Garden City is the top seed in Nassau II and the team to beat because of the returning seniors at the skill positions: quarterback Colin Hart, running back/wide receiver Jason Coppola and tight end Danny Boccafola. They too will play college lacrosse at Brown, Villanova and Cornell, respectively.

Yeboah-Kodie grew up surrounded by athletic excellence. Philip Yeboah-Kodie, his father, played linebacker at Penn State in the early 1990s, was drafted and played briefly in the NFL. Giordano competed in track for the Nittany Lions. His older sisters also competed in track: Alexis at Columbia and Alyssa at Penn State.

Yeboah-Kodie had opportunities to continue playing football. Ivy League champion Yale wanted him. Syracuse, Boston College and Rutgers all recruited him. His dad said he could see the natural abilities the first time he gave the grade-schooler a handoff in the yard, “but our family has always been about making your own decisions and so I never emphasized football to him.”

“I really like football and everything — it’s fun — but I just like lacrosse better,” Yeboah-Kodie said. “I like the creativity of the game. I like to be creative and do my own thing…When I visited Brown I just loved it there so the chance to be there and play lacrosse? It’s what I wanted to do.”

That creativity is important should come as no surprise. When Yeboah-Kodie isn’t excelling on the football and lacrosse fields or in the classroom, he also plays the French horn in the school’s band.

Talented and successful as he is, Yeboah-Kodie also has the rare quality of humility. Ettinger said he “is the kind of person you want on your team because, as good as he is, he never makes it about himself. He is always about the team.”

One thing he knows, however, is that the Trojans will have the proverbial bull's-eye on their backs all season. After the small core of veteran playmakers, Garden City will have few players with a lot of varsity experience. Most of the front seven on defense graduated in the spring and many of the offensive linemen will be first-time starters.

For this reason Ettinger said Yeboah-Kodie will not just play cornerback but also the other spots in the defensive backfield — and might be responsible for calling the defensive plays. “We’ll move him around so people can’t just go away from him,” Ettinger said. “If he’s the left corner, they can just throw right. We move him around and they have to be on their toes.”

Said Yeboah-Kodie, “You could be concerned about all the people we graduated, but we have people ready to step in and replace them."

More of a concern to him is that bull's-eye and the way the Trojans, the top seed in Nassau II, will be getting every opponent’s best game.

“It’s nice that we haven’t lost, but there is definitely pressure on us,” he said. “I feel like everyone is talking about whether someone’s going to break the streak. The seniors aren’t going to let that kind of thinking in.

“It’s our last season together and we have to be focused…to get the ending we want.”