Riverhead routs North Babylon 52-20 for Suffolk County title

The Riverhead Blue Waves are Suffolk County Division II champions after a 52-20 rout over North Babylon Sunday night at LaValle Stadium in Stony Brook.

Riverhead (9-2) will battle Garden City (10-1) Saturday, Dec. 1 for the Class II Long Island Championship.

Quarterback Ryan Bitzer went 13 of 19 for 291 yards and threw three touchdown passes to wide receiver Quinn Funn and 60-yard touchdown to wide receiver Jeffrey Pittman. Funn also scored on a fumble recovery and Bitzer ran one in after Funn, who had seven receptions for 153 yards) carried a pass to the 1-yard line. Jeremiah Cheatom rushed for 95 yards.

Riverhead’s defense held North Babylon, despite a Bulldog touchdown on the team’s first possession. Riverhead answered with a 20-yard touchdown pass from Bitzer to Funn in the end zone, after Cheatom ran the ball down the field on four carries. With the extra point, Riverhead took a 7-6 lead.

North Bablyon fumbled the ball on the second play of the next possession, after receiving the kick at their own 2, Quinn Funn picked it up and ran it in. With Kucuk’s kick, Riverhead took a 14-6 lead.

Riverhead added 14 more points in the second quarter, but on the Bulldogs’ last play of the half, the Bulldogs scored on a punt return and added a two-point conversion, to make the score at halftime 28-14. That was as close as the Bulldogs would get. The Blue Waves scored on their first possession of the second half and remained in control of the game till the end, racking up a season-high 52 points.

“I didn’t expect to win this big,” Riverhead head coach Leif Shay said after the game. “North Babylon has a good program. I got a little nervous in the first half. We made some errors there. But we came out in the second half ready to play,” Shay said.

The county title is something Bitzer and Funn both said they’ve had on their minds since they played together in 8th grade, on a middle school team that went 6-0 — in the same year the Blue Waves varsity team went 12-0 and won the school’s only Long Island championship.

“We wanted to leave something special for the school,” Bitzer said tonight. “We knew this team had the talent to do it, and we just did it.”

“We play as a team,” Funn said.

The team will be looking to win Riverhead’s second LIC title next week in Stony Brook. The Waves face Garden City, which won its fourth consecutive Nassau II title today at Hofstra University, beating Wantagh 21-17 — despite Trojans quarterback Brett Stewart throwing three interceptions.

RiverheadLOCAL photos by George Faella
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RiverheadLOCAL photos by Emil Breitenbach Jr.
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