This was a fun feature last week, so I figured we could keep it going through the postseason.

Obviously, Iona Prep isn’t in the CHSFL playoffs just yet (season finale vs. St. Francis Prep at home on Sunday). But I felt it would be great for us to get a behind-the-scenes look at the Gaels two days after their momentous win over St. Anthony’s.

I’ve enlisted Nick Biagioni, one of the only two-way starters for Iona, to provide that exposure. Nick, by the way, had two sacks on the defensive line and powered an offensive line that plowed through St. Anthony’s for 459 total yards.

As you’ll see below, Nick is a very powerful writer. I’m very impressed with the passion that oozes his words. And his line: “We’re not perfect, we’re just undefeated” is brilliant. Starting making t-shirts right now.
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By Nick Biagioni, Iona Prep

One Team. That’s the way we break down our huddle. People accuse us of not being a team of heart. They say we all come from different areas and it’s not like when you play for your hometown and play with the kids you grow up with. Wrong. Diversity is our key to success. We reside from every city in Westchester, as well as Greenwich and the Bronx. We represent Pop Warner leagues like the Eastchester Blue Devils (represent), Mount Vernon Razorbacks, New Rochelle Pop Warner, White Plains Bernie’s, Yonkers Colts, and much more. Every public school team represents the town they reside in. We represent Westchester.

We have kids from every town, race, nationality, style of clothing, but at school we all wear a shirt, tie, and jacket. We all like different music but you wouldn’t be able to tell by the way we dress. We all hang out in school, we eat lunch together, we go to Chicken Joes, and we have fun. When we get on that field we all wear the same Iona Prep practice Jersey. We are a family.

We hit hard and go full speed for the two hours we practice for. We practice at a tempo incomparable to most High School teams. Coach Vic loves to preach “tempo.” We have kids like Greg Gadson, Beau DiSimone, Steven Foy, and Morris Hilton who fight for the notorious award of Scout Team Player of the Week, which comes with a pretty cool T-Shirt that I’ve never won. The award winners vary between starters and non-starters. This is what contributes to our undefeated record. The papers like to say we are perfect, but every one knows we are nowhere near perfect. Perfect is scoring on every drive and never getting scored on. Perfect is playing mistake free football. But let’s face the facts here, every team makes mistakes.

We are not perfect, we are just undefeated.

St Anthony’s though, that’s a whole different animal. St Anthony’s is a dynasty. They’re like the Packers of the 60’s, the Steelers of the 70’s, the 49ers of the 80’s, the Cowboys of the 90’s, and the Patriots of the present day. Every team strives to beat them. It’s circled on every schedule of every team in our league. Most teams would be happy if they went 1-9 and beat St. Anthony’s. They are a skilled and a well-coached team. If they take a player out, the backup is just as good as the starter. Seven Championships in a row is no joke. In the last two years I was 0-3 (which was nothing compared to Darlos James’ 0-6 since his freshman year) against St Anthony’s, not counting the time we beat their Freshman “B” team. Our game plan was to be faster. Speed is the name of the game. St. Anthony’s had never seen the fast-paced no huddle offense that we possess. We practiced what we preached and we played the way we practiced. We played with as little mistakes as we possibly could and did it with a fan base that is larger than I’ve ever seen. The fans and alumni kept us in the game. We did as much as we could up front to dominate them.
Size doesn’t win games. We have three offensive linemen under 6 feet. Every play is like a battle upfront, you look to the left and you look to the right on the line and you know both of those kids will give everything they’ve got with you to win that battle upfront. Coach Petrillo makes sure we know what we are doing, and that even though we don’t get any credit, we are just as important as every one else. We watch film over and over again until we know every play. We won as a team. We beat them but we all know once isn’t enough.

The whole week we circled around this one idea, this one holiday. October 25th is St. Crispin’s day. On St. Crispin’s day, an outnumbered English Army defeated a superior British Army in the Battle of Agincourt. Therefore, the Church named St. Crispin’s day the day of the underdog. Saturday was October 25th. The last time we beat them 11 years ago it was on this same day, October 25th. You can call it ironic, you can call it destiny, but it was just one thing we stressed on, from both Coach Nap (the Bronxville head coach who coached the last team to beat them) and Brother Gaffney in our pregame Chapel ritual.

Coming into school the next day was like coming in when the Giants beat the Patriots in the Super Bowl (even though I’m a Jets fan). As we walked into school we it was like we were a bunch of Pros. There wasn’t a teacher who didn’t congratulate us or a kid who wasn’t talking about the game. There wasn’t a student who didn’t read the newspaper and see all the names and pictures printed. There were hours and hours of talk about each play and each collision. It was one of the best days in my life and it felt better then anything. Personally, the feeling was better the next day. It took me a while to grasp what we did. It still hasn’t sunk in and probably won’t until we do it one more time. It was the greatest game of my high school career. I can speak for my whole team when I say it was the greatest feeling we ever had on a football field. I just hope every one on my team can have that feeling one more time.

If you want to win the Championship, you know you’re going to play St. Anthony’s that is twice as prepared and 10 times hungrier. We all understand our real season hasn’t started yet and that it doesn’t matter if you go undefeated in the regular season, it only matters that you go undefeated in the playoffs and that’s our goal as a team. One game at a time, that’s the way we look at things.