Samantha Heyman's all-around effort puts Half Hollow Hills into county championship game
Half Hollow Hills quarterback Samantha Heyman, second from right, and teammates celebrate after their 32-13 win over host Longwood in the Suffolk Class A flag football semifinals on Friday. Credit: James Escher
It is not wise to enter a lion’s den, especially if ill-equipped. Luckily for Half Hallow Hills flag football, that was not the case.
In the Suffolk Class A semifinals on Friday at Longwood, third-seeded Half Hallow Hills visited the second-seeded Longwood Lions and rode junior Samantha Heyman’s athletic dominance to a 32-13 victory. Heyman completed 20 of her 27 passes for 169 yards and four touchdowns, while also rushing 14 times for 103 yards and another score. She also intercepted two passes, each of which led to Hills touchdowns.
Hills (15-3) will now play for its third consecutive county championship Wednesday, when it meets ninth-seeded Sachem East at 4 p.m. at Longwood High School. Heyman, who has been the quarterback of each of the previous two county champion Hills teams, said that this championship game berth was much different.
“The first two times, we never had those iffy moments,” Heyman said. “We’ve never lost three games like we did this season — three big games. That was big for us. The pride that I have right now is just so much larger than it has been in past years because of what we’ve been through as a team.
“Everyone thought we were on our downfall,” Heyman continued. “The fact that we came out today and do what we did and walk out alive, it’s amazing.”
Leading just 7-0 with 3:52 left in the first half, Heyman halted Longwood’s marching offense by picking off a pass deep in her own territory. Four plays later, with the ball at midfield on fourth down and inches, Heyman kept it on a sneak and burst through the middle, breaking an attempted flag pull and taking it 40 yards for the touchdown to make it 13-0.
On the next possession, with Longwood once again across midfield, Heyman jumped an in-breaking route for her second pick , returning to Longwood’s 18. Three plays later, she tossed a 2-yard score to sophomore Marisa Dominic — her second touchdown reception of the game.
That momentum carried into the second half, as Heyman promptly marched her girls right down the field with a 36-yard strike to Dominic before hitting eighth grader Ella Candel for a 12-yard touchdown to make it 25-0.
Key defensive contributions came from Hills sophomores Laila D’Haiti and Emma Gould. D’Haiti deflected a fourth-down pass at the goal line in the first half to keep it 7-0, while Gould finished with two sacks and caught the game-sealing touchdown pass with 7:10 remaining.
“On defense, our energy was up,” Gould said. “Everyone was communicating, which just helped bring us up. It feels great knowing that we lost to them during the regular season, so it was . . . a great feeling.”
For Longwood (14-4), Delaney Israel threw two touchdown passes.
Mike Anderson is a high school sports reporter who has covered 12 sports so far at Newsday. He was the sports editor of Stony Brook University's campus newspaper for two years.
