Last season’s bad taste leaves Goldbacks hungry

By Mike Zummo
Posted 9/1/21

Things are starting to feel a little bit more normal on the gridiron at Newburgh Free Academy’s Academy Field.

At the end of the first week of August preseason, the Goldbacks capped off …

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Last season’s bad taste leaves Goldbacks hungry

Posted

Things are starting to feel a little bit more normal on the gridiron at Newburgh Free Academy’s Academy Field.

At the end of the first week of August preseason, the Goldbacks capped off their first week of practice with its ritual intersquad scrimmage where Blue and White match up.

One thing was clear after the two-hour practice/friendly competition on Saturday morning.

“We have a lot of talent,” senior quarterback Dylan Iorlano said. “I think we have to go over our plays more and be more familiar and master them more. But other than that, I think we’ve had a great day.”

Iorlano was the quarterback for both teams and ended the day by leading both the Blue team to a game-winning touchdown in the final drive of the day.

While the Goldbacks feel they have some things to correct before the season opener on Sept. 10 against Minisink Valley, the Goldbacks are focused on bringing the Section 9 Class AA championship to a slightly different conference.

They’ll face their usual Class AA rivals, Monroe-Woodbury, Pine Bush, and Middletown, but gone are Valley Central and Washingtonville – they moved to Class A – but Warwick has moved up.

The Goldbacks are hungry after the way last season ended, getting shut out of the playoffs because they couldn’t play a league game against Pine Bush because the Bushmen had to quarantine.

It turned what would have been a three-way tie for first place into a third-place finish for the Goldbacks.

Junior offensive lineman/linebacker Sam Okeyo said the Goldbacks are coming into the season hungry, but not dwelling on the Fall 2 COVID season.

“It’s not necessarily (on our minds),” Okeyo said. “You can’t change it. We just focus on taking each week at a time and focus on winning one game every week. We’re not really worried about the past or the future yet. We’re just worried about what we’re doing each week.”

Offensively, Iorlano is getting back one of his key targets at wide receiver, the 6-foot-8 junior, Deondre Johnson. Okoye also made some catches from the tight end position.

Eric Duncan had a strong day running the ball.

“I think we got better today,” Newburgh coach Bill Bianco said. “We’ve got to keep improving up front. That’s the biggest group and it takes the longest to gel.”

Practice on Wednesday and Thursday will be shortened to more of an after-school practice, as opposed to summer 2-a-days as the Goldbacks prepare for Friday’s scrimmage against Roy C. Ketcham, where they look to progress as they head into the regular season.

“I just want to keep on improving,” Bianco said. “We’ve got a lot of new guys playing. Any time you can start this camp the first week, there’s always an acclimation period where they’re just trying to learn everything all at once. It’s like they’ve learned something new, and they forget something else. So, I’m just looking to improve with everything.”