Wantagh football looks for long-awaited happy ending in a Long Island Championship vs. Bayport - Blue Point
Wantagh running back Dylan Martini, right, gets congratulated by teammate Joe Valentino after rushing for a 47-yard touchdown in the second quarter of the Nassau Conference IV final at Shuart Stadium on Friday. Credit: James Escher
Wantagh has a well-established winning tradition under football coach Keith Sachs.
The program has won five county titles in Sachs' 32 years at the helm, most recently beating Plainedge, 48-21, for the Nassau Conference IV title last Friday to return to the Long Island Championship for the first time since claiming the Long Island Class III crown in 2016.
Sachs noted “the template’s the same, but the kids are different” each year, though this season’s team has thrived with a player-led foundation. Wantagh (10-1) will face two-time reigning LI champ Bayport-Blue Point (11-0), winners of 34 straight games, in the Long Island Class IV championship at noon on Friday at Hofstra’s Shuart Stadium.
“Every year we try to win a county championship, we come within a game or so,” Sachs said. “So the difference on the field, obviously, we won one more game than we did the last [seven] years. It’s not a huge difference. But the kids are awesome this year – work ethic, commitment, attitude – really awesome.
“Your best players are your hardest workers, too, and when your best players don’t care if they do well, that’s just awesome.”
Wantagh is 2-1 in Long Island Championships, with wins in 2016 and 2001 and a loss in 2004.
Wantagh began morning workouts for this season last Feb. 1, the day after its final dinner with the 2023 team. It was a routine set before last season that star senior running back/safety Dylan Martini said is “working out tremendously.”
“Four times a week, 6 o'clock in the morning,” Martini said. “We showered at the school, and we would go straight to school. And some of us had lacrosse, basketball after that, and it just didn’t affect anything. Everybody showed up. Everybody did their time. Everybody had the same goal in mind, and it just feels great to achieve one of the first two goals that we had in mind with this team.”
Martini has rushed for 28 touchdowns and 1,834 yards on 127 carries. He runs behind an offensive line of (from left to right) Joe Valentino, Shareef McMillan, Chris Romano, Anthony Calise and Andrew Perez.
Chris Massari was Wantagh’s left tackle for the first nine games but suffered a season-ending elbow injury. Valentino, who moved from backup tight end, has been “no step backwards as far as strength and speed,” Sachs said. Guard Tommy Wunderlich and tight end Cole Spinelli have been vital pieces as well.
“Our goal is to set [Martini] up,” said McMillan, a two-way senior standout who also plays defensive tackle. “To be honest, we don’t really care about newspapers, stuff like that. Our goal is to make him look as good as possible, and we take pride in that. He gets one more yard, we feel better.”
Quarterback Ryan Conigliaro, whom Sachs called “phenomenal,” has completed 46 of 65 passes for 986 yards and 16 touchdowns.
Wantagh has won its three playoff games by an average margin of 37.7 points.
“I feel like we start hard,” McMillan said. “Don’t give [them] any life and, really, any motivation to keep playing this game with us. Once you hit them a couple times, they start to be questioning why we’re still playing.”
Martini also lauded Wantagh’s relationship with past players, saying, “I don’t think there’s anyone that has a closer network with past teams and current teams as Wantagh does.” He regularly talks to Jimmy Joyce, a Seattle Mariners pitching prospect and a safety on Wantagh’s 2016 team, and the team receives texts from members of the 2001 squad.
There was no LIC played following Wantagh’s Nassau IV title in spring 2021, and it has lost in the Nassau III championship three times since 2016. Sachs admitted the run of close calls “makes it sweeter” now that the program is back on the Island’s biggest stage.
What remains to be seen, though, is how this team will pen its ending.
“We kind of try to keep the tradition, while we also say your story is not written yet,” Sachs said. “Do you want to be the team that made the big play? Do you want to be the team that missed an extra point this year? I mean, we watch old films of good and bad games just to say, ‘This is your story.’ It’s not about me. I’ve won, I’ve lost.
“But what’s your story going to be?”
Ben Dickson joined Newsday’s high school sports staff in 2023 after graduating from Maryland, where he covered several of the Terrapins' teams.
