All four Nassau football champs are undefeated entering Long Island Championships

Garden City is on a 29-game winning streak. Plainedge has won 23 in a row. North Shore is on a run of 19 straight victories. And Farmingdale, too, hasn’t lost all season.

Consistency is one of the most sought-after and elusive qualities in sports. Each of the four Nassau County entries in this year’s Long Island Championships appears to have found it in its own way. And each is taking an 11-0 record into what should be its biggest test of the season.

“The kids [are] the most important part of the formula,” Garden City coach Dave Ettinger said. “We can’t recruit, so we’ve got to do things with what we’re given on a yearly basis. . . . We’re blessed to be in a community that takes a lot of pride in athletics [and] not only football.”

“In certain schools, just like with a lot of different things, certain things are popular; right now, at Plainedge, playing football is popular,”  the team's coach Rob Shaver said. “It’s just like that at Sayville. It’s their sport. And when that’s the thing that kids want to do, you don’t lose the ones that are going to be the better players to the hallways.”

Plainedge (11-0) and Sayville (11-0) meet Saturday at Stony Brook in the Class III title game, followed by Farmingdale (11-0) against Ward Melville (8-3) in the Class I final. On Friday at Hofstra, North Shore (11-0) goes against Bayport-Blue Point (10-0) for the Class IV championship before Garden City (11-0) meets Bellport (10-1) for the Class II crown.

Each of the Nassau schools has its own recipe for sustained success, though there are some common ingredients. One commonality is that their communities have strong youth football programs; players not only begin learning the game early but also have been playing together for years before they reach the high school varsity. They also have had tremendous coaching stability.

Farmingdale coach Buddy Krumenacker took over the Dalers when former coach Don Snyder retired after 40 seasons and he has now been leading them for for the past 30 seasons. Shaver took over the Red Devils in 1996. North Shore coach Dan Agovino is in his 21st season and estimates that all his assistant coaches have been in place for a decade or longer. Now in his eighth season at the helm, Ettinger served on former coach Tom Flatley’s staff beginning in 1999 along with many of the current assistant coaches.

“We work well together because of the familiarity and, for our players, there is a certain familiarity with all of us,” Agovino said. “They know us because we’ve been here. We coached their older brothers.”

Krumenacker played for the Dalers, ultimately returned there to coach and has taken the program to 17 county title games,  winning nine. Still he sees himself as part of something bigger in Farmingdale and that view,  shared by generations of players, is part of why the program has sustained success.

“Football is important here and Farmingdale had a football culture before ‘culture’ was even a word people used,” he said.. “It starts here on a youth level and the way those coaches promote the game and . . . when the players get to high school they become part of something. One guy might say ‘I have a standard to live up to’ and another might say ‘football is just what I do,’ but it’s something that runs deep for all of them. That was here before I was.”

North Shore’s ascent to perennial contender is more recent. The Vikings won their first county title in 45 years last season and  seek a second straight Long Island championship.

Agovino said “winning has bred winning – the number of middle school players is way up and that should keep us competitive for years to come.”

At Plainedge, Shaver sees a synchronicity between coaching philosophy and the players.

“[It’s] going to sound crazy, but we don’t make winning the emphasis,” he said. “It's all the characteristics of a good person: you're disciplined, you're responsible, you're dependable. All those things go into it and then [the] winning kind of happens by accident. . . . It sort of jibes with the community and our hard-working, blue-collar-type kids.”

Watching Garden City play, one can’t help notice a few things. The Trojans have great athletes but they also play a fundamentally sound brand of football. They don’t make many physical or mental errors. Asked what’s behind it, Ettinger suggested it is more about the players than anything else.

“We believe in preparation and we try to have our players as prepared as possible so they can anticipate situations and react quickly,” he said. “We practice . . . but it’s nothing out of the ordinary that other teams aren’t working on. It’s the kids. There is no secret.”

By Roger Rubin

roger.rubin@newsday.com@rogrubin

Roger Rubin returned to Newsday in 2018 to write about high schools, colleges and baseball following 20 years at the Daily News. A Baseball Hall of Fame voter since 2011, he has covered 13 MLB postseasons and 14 NCAA Final Fours.