Rachel Ganz's deflection hands Plainview-Old Bethpage JFK the LI flag football championship

The rap on football for some, fair or not, is that it’s ‘too complicated.’ And, while in some moments, this might hold a little water, Saturday afternoon was not one of them. The situation late in the Long Island flag football championship was as simple as it could get — one play, one stop, one chance to become a champ.

That chance fell on Plainview-Old Bethpage JFK’s Rachel Ganz. Ganz, patrolling the secondary with 28 seconds left in a one-point game, knocked away a fourth-down pass as she collided with Half Hollow Hills receiver Olivia Hamilton. The ball fell to the ground and went back on downs to Plainview, who knelt out the clock and escaped with a 13-12 win over Half Hollow Hills at Sachem East High School in Farmingville.

Plainview will now face the Section IX winner in the Regional Championship, scheduled for Saturday at the Jets practice facility in Florham Park, New Jersey.

“I saw the ball in the air and, once I saw it, I knew I had to get a hand on it,” Ganz said. “Once I did that, I knew we won the game.”

Half Hollow Hills began their final drive with 2:17 left. A first down run from quarterback Samantha Heyman, followed by two dump-passes to Caitlyn Collymore brought Half Hollow Hills ever closer to late-game heroics. Then, Ganz stepped in with some of her own.

“I was looking where their top receivers were lined up and the field position,” Ganz said. “If I know they’re going to pass it, I’ll start a little back and, if they’re running, I’ll start more up. It was fourth-and-goal, so I knew they were throwing it deep. I started a little back and got the hand on it to make the play.”

Half Hollow Hills dominated the first half, but Plainview broke though in the final two minutes. It would be all they needed.

Hills held on to a 6-0 lead until shortly before halftime, thanks to a Jahniya McCreary rushing touchdown on a double reverse with 17:21 left in the first half. The Hills defense looked stout, grabbing flags and forcing turnovers.

“We hate to see it happen like that,” Plainview’s Lara Glasser said of Hills’ opening touchdown. “We practice that play a lot. A bunch of us missed the flag, me included. We started off really slow, but we just channeled what we learned in practice and were able to pull out the win.”

Shortly before halftime, Plainview’s offense came alive. Quarterback Jen Canarutto found Glasser in the corner of the end zone on a fourth-and-goal from the 9-yard line with 1:55 left in the first half. The score was set up by a 35-yard rush from Canarutto earlier in the drive. Plainview, who hadn’t crossed midfield until the drive, had figured something out.

“I wasn’t going to let anybody stop me,” Canarutto said of her 35-yard drive-saving run. “No one was going to pull my flag.”

Plainview added to their lead by forcing a quick stop on defense and moving the ball enough for Canarutto to find Ganz for a 17-yard touchdown pass as time expired. It was a whirlwind final three minutes that would end with Plainview ahead 13-6 at halftime, in the lead for good.

Heyman scored on a quarterback keeper from the 1-yard line with 13:01 left in the game to cut the Plainview lead to 1 but, thanks to a false start penalty that pushed the conversion attempt back, could not tie the score.