Plainedge football's Nick Moutsatsos, Dom Agovino help hand South Side its first loss
Plainedge's Nick Moutsatsos tackles a South Side ball carrier during a Nassau Conference III football game on Friday, Oct. 16, 2026, in Rockville Centre. Credit: Derrick Dingle
Nick Moutsatsos had his eyes on setting the tone as early as possible Friday night.
The Plainedge junior linebacker registered a tackle for loss on South Side’s second play from scrimmage. On the next play, he intercepted a pass. Dom Agovino followed immediately with a 10-yard touchdown run, and the Red Devils were just getting started.
Plainedge forced turnovers on South Side’s first three possessions and rolled to a 36-7 road win in Nassau III, handing the conference’s preseason No. 1 seed its first loss.
Moutsatsos' mindset from the opening kick?
“Just go straight for them," he said, "get the ball right away, get it back for offense in plus territory."
After Agovino’s touchdown to open the scoring, it was Casey Auer’s turn to make plays on defense for Plainedge.
A bad snap went into the turf, and Auer sprinted to recover it with 6:04 left in the first quarter.
“Every play we want to go hard, and we want to hit somebody hard,” Auer said. “We want to do our job to the best of our ability.”
Six plays later, Agovino cashed in his second rushing touchdown, this time from 3 yards out with 2:57 left in the first quarter.
The third turnover came when Auer hit the quarterback and the pass fell into Lucas Rizzo’s hands downfield with 56.4 seconds left in the first quarter.
“We pride ourselves on being real fast defensively,” Plainedge coach Adam Hovorka said. “Our guys can run and make things happen.”
The Red Devils closed the first half with a 13-play, 57-yard drive, capped by Evan Vasquez’s 1-yard touchdown run on a fullback dive as time expired. Agovino found Mike Ranaudo on a fake extra point to give Plainedge a 22-0 halftime lead.
Plainedge (5-1) rushed for 221 yards behind its five starting linemen. Jake McCloskey, Ivan Kekovski, Alex Martinez, Caiden Farrell and Jake O’Brien led the way. Many of the plays ended with a Plainedge lineman delivering a pancake block.
“They buy into what we’re doing,” Hovorka said. “They love each other, they love our team, they love the coaches, and they play really, really hard.”
“Coach [Kevin] Spellman, the guy who coaches the O-line, is money,” Hovorka added. “What he does with those guys is phenomenal. He is a tremendous football coach.”
Auer added a 1-yard rushing touchdown as Plainedge went up 29-0 with 3:08 left in the third quarter.
“They took it to us,” South Side coach Phil Onesto said. “A lot of things that we’re going to have to fix.”
Onesto said the early turnovers put South Side (5-1) in difficult field position defensively.
“One of the points of emphasis we told our team to take care of the ball, and we unfortunately didn’t do that,” he said.
Plainedge’s lone loss was to Wantagh, a game in which it surrendered a 19-point halftime lead. Since, the Red Devils have outscored their opponents 211-32 in five straight wins.
“After the Wantagh game, we all were fired up, too,” Agovino said. “It’s a hard loss, but now we’re a two-half team. We’re not a one-half team anymore, and we’re going to show that for the rest of the year.”
