By Kyle LoJacono
As the final seconds ticked off the clock, Steinbrenner senior defensive back Andrew Feldhaus started to realize he and all his classmates would never again suit up in a high school football game.
Feldhaus and the 18 other seniors on the Warriors (7-3) football team ended up winners in their final football game after defeating Middleton 43-0 at home on Nov. 10.
As Feldhaus finished shaking hands with the opposing players and coaches he wandered around the field. He didn’t want to leave.
Many of the seniors stayed on the turf long after the stands had emptied for the final football game of the season. Feldhaus even left his helmet on the entire time, delaying taking it off for the last time in his high school career.
“I can’t even explain what I’m feeling right now,” said Feldhaus overcome with emotion after the game. “I’m just overwhelmed.”
Feldhaus, who attended Gaither as a freshman before coming to Steinbrenner when it opened in 2009, picked off his sixth pass of the season in the fourth quarter to halt a Tigers’ (0-10) drive deep in Warriors territory to help preserve the fourth shutout of the season.
“When the ball was in my hands I just knew it’s the last interception I’m going to have in high school,” Feldhaus said. “To get it here in Warrior Stadium, it felt great. I’m really sad that it’s over.”
Fellow senior Brain Gainer had a team-high 110 rushing yards, his first 100-yard game of his high school career. The running back also posted touchdown runs of 38 and 20 yards.
Gainer, who transferred from Sickles as a junior, was forced into action when starter Kendall Pearcey left the game with a right ankle injury in the first quarter.
“Kendall went down and coach came to me and said ‘Gainer you’re going to run the ball until we tell you otherwise,’” Gainer said. “I didn’t know I was going to get the ball like that, but I did.”
Steinbrenner coach Floyd Graham added, “Brain Gainer is a kid who practiced his butt off every single day. He runs our scout team and he was always the first one in working in the weight room. He’s the one who’s always running track. He’s the one who’s always here for 7-on-7 practice. All of a sudden tonight he just turned it on with those two touchdowns and it was amazing to see.”
Warriors senior running back Cody Cazin had a first of his own in the victory. He ran for 78 yards, including a 4-yard run into the end zone in the fourth quarter to score his first touchdown on Steinbrenner’s final drive of the season.
Cazin played linebacker as a sophomore and missed all of his junior year because of injury.
“It was incredible to score a touchdown,” Cazin said. “To be able to get my first touchdown in my first year playing offense, and after I missed my whole junior season, is just incredible. Best feeling I’ve ever felt.”
Warriors senior defensive lineman Zack Boryla scored the squad’s final points of the season when he fell on a Middleton fumble with 2:18 left in the season.
Steinbrenner’s seven victories are the most in the program’s three-year history, amazing considering the less-than-ideal way things started during the summer of 2009.
“Our first full day we were at Martinez (Middle) because they wouldn’t let us on the field yet,” Graham said. “We had no football equipment and most of the kids had never set foot in a weight room before. We were doing calisthenics in lieu of weights. We didn’t have helmets because they were still in storage, so we had to pick them up. We didn’t have knee pads, so we had to go to Sickles and they let us borrow some.”
Graham said they didn’t even have goal posts to practice with, so the Warriors had to go for two-point conversions every time they scored touchdowns during their first game at Strawberry Crest.
Steinbrenner went 3-6-1 in a split varsity/junior varsity season in 2009. The record improved to 5-5 last year.
“So we had some massive lumps, but they went through it,” Graham said. “Kids like Cody Cazin who scored his first touchdown tonight — you see the tears in his eyes and that speaks a thousand words. I’m very proud of them.”
Things turned around on both sides of the ball for the Warriors this year. Steinbrenner allowed just 12.9 points per game this season while scoring 27.9.
The squad came up just short of making the playoffs, but the departing seniors helped make the Warriors winners for the first time.
“I’ve been here all three years and everything we’ve put in has been worth it,” Cazin said. “All that building up to this winning season was an amazing thing to go through.”
