Tigers open season with a big win 

The Fort Hamilton H.S. football team opened its season at home against the Judges of Benjamin Cardozo H.S. from Bayside, Queens.

The varsity team was anxious to start after two successful preseason games over New Utrecht and New Dorp. For the home opener, the student organization came up a “White-Out” unity theme for a fund-raiser selling white “Kick Off” T-shirts while the Tigers wore their white road uniforms in solidarity. 

On the first possession, the Tigers marched down to the 39-yard line, where quarterback Aidan Farley scored the first of his two touchdowns. Seeing that all of his receivers were covered, Farley scampered down the sideline for the first score of the game. He immediately set up the Tigers’ next score by tossing Trey Marshall a 12-yard pass out of the backfield for a lightning quick 14-0 first quarter lead.

Still midway through the opening quarter, Mycul Glover recovered a fumble on the 23-yard line that set up another touchdown for Marshall. This time the fullback ran counter to his blockers and found a seam up the middle for a 12-yard touchdown run.

Marshall’s second score was followed by a spectacular broken field run by Manny King.  Following his blockers up the middle, King broke through the front line into the Cardozo secondary. Once there, he made multiple jukes to stop three would-be tacklers in their tracks for a 75-yard touchdown run to put the Tigers up 30-0 at the end of the half.

In the third quarter, the Judges tried to prove that they were down but not out with a 40-yard pass play from quarterback Isaiah Wolf-Young to Robert Lawton Jr. Saving a sure touchdown, Tiger cornerback Aiden Porter made the key stop at the Fort Hamilton 10-yard line, where the Tiger defense held Cardozo scoreless on their next four attempts.  

Regaining the ball on offense, the Tigers struck again as Farley found a wide open August Porter in the end zone on a deep 38-yard pass to finish the third quarter with a 38-0 lead.

Midway through the fourth quarter, on a play that was supposed to eat up the clock, the Tigers found themselves in a situation that they couldn’t resist. After successfully faking a handoff to Thomas O’Neill to the left side, Farley found the whole right side of the field open and took off down the sideline toward the end zone. Farley made the 70-yard run unscathed until he had to fight off two Cardozo defenders at the 5-yard line with a stiff-arm in order to push himself across the goal line for the final 46-0 score. 

“It felt like every time that we touched the ball we were scoring,” said Fort Hamilton coach Dan Perez.

In fact, the coach’s statement was supported by stats showing that the Tigers ran an unusually low number of plays. Of the 20 plays from the line of scrimmage, Fort Hamilton scored on six of them.

While the offense was certainly on display, defenders Ismail Haider, Zakari Benchemmar and Ajani Carew-Robinson also made their marks with three unassisted tackles apiece.

Also contributing were team supporters, including Brendan Farley, proprietor of the Soccer Tavern, who generously hosted the post-game celebration. Through Farley’s arrangement with the Mancini Pizza Shop and the House of Wings, the Tigers had an ample supply of pizzas and wings along with cases of water and Gatorade.