Cassara, Donning Hubbard's 12, Leads Westhampton Beach Football To Season-Opening Victory

One of the toughest tasks for the Westhampton Beach football team’s coaching staff leading up to each season is picking the team’s top captain and handing that player Cory Hubbard’s number 12, and this season was no different.

Hubbard was an All-County multi-sport athlete who graduated from Westhampton Beach and attended the University of Maryland, where he was hit and killed by a drunk driver his senior year, in 2014. He has been honored by both the football and wrestling programs at Westhampton Beach over the past several years. The football team honors him by giving its top captain his former number 12, while the wrestling team named its dual-meet invitational after him.

Picking one player to represent the team and Hubbard is not easy, but its a task the coaching staff, led by head coach Bryan Schaumloffel, takes very seriously. Schaumloffel admitted that this year’s senior class made it particularly tough, but ultimately, he and his staff decided on senior Aidan Cassara.

Cassara rewarded his team by leading it to a 25-0 home victory over Rocky Point in the Hurricanes season-opening game on Friday afternoon. He rushed 13 times for 103 yards and a touchdown and also caught two passes for 39 yards.

Cassara said he first received word he would be donning number 12 after receiving a text from his mother, which he admitted brought tears to his eyes.

“Honestly, when I first got it I was speechless,” he said. “I obviously didn’t get the chance to know Cory. I heard he was a great kid. It’s truly an honor that I get to share this number with people from the past that I have played with: Liam McIntyre, Dylan Laube, going back a couple of years, Bryce Phillips, Henry James Moretta. All those kids, I water-boyed for them. It just means so much. I can’t say enough about it, and a lot of kids on our team deserved this, too.

“There is no one more deserving of this award than him,” fellow senior Christian Capuano chimed in. “He represents everything that Cory Hubbard represented, and I’m so happy for him.”

“Knowing Aidan for a long time — I’ve known him since he was a little kid in first grade and he played PAL football — Aidan’s a high-character kid and a great representative of number 12,” Schaumloffel said.

The Hurricanes couldn’t have gotten off to a much better start on Friday when James O’Neill recovered a fumble in Rocky Point territory on the very first play of the game. But, to the Eagles credit, they stuffed Westhampton Beach trying to convert a 4th and 7 play on its first offensive drive of the game, keeping the game scoreless after the first quarter.

Eventually, though, the ’Canes found the end zone early in the second quarter when senior Dom Sarno punched the ball in from a yard out, punctuating a drive that included a big pass play from Capuano to Cassara, and was aided by a 15-yard facemask penalty on the same play.

From that point on, it was all ’Canes. They created two turnovers in the second quarter — an interception by Deegan Laube, and another by Geoff Arrasate — the latter of which set up the second touchdown of the game for Westhampton Beach, a 4th an 1 run-in by Jackson Hulse, which made it 13-0 at the half.

Hulse added another score early in the third quarter and his 40-yard reception later in the game led to Cassara’s touchdown. The defense stayed on top of Rocky Point’s offense, creating five turnovers overall, with O’Neil pulling in another interception and Anthony Mattera recovering another fumble.

Westhampton Beach coaches and players admitted after the game that their slow start on offense could be contributed to not having played in a game for nearly 18 months due to the ongoing pandemic, and then only having 10 days to prepare.

“Ten days to prepare for a varsity football game is not an easy task,” Schaumloffel said. “We probably have like 30 practices before we have the first game, so we had one-third to prepare, and it showed at times. But you know what? It wasn’t as bad as I thought it might be. Our coaches did a great job in preparing the team for the game and our guys played great. We tackled pretty well. A couple of snafus on offense, but overall our kids did a great job. I’m really proud of them.”

Due to the ongoing pandemic, Section XI, the governing body of Suffolk County high school athletics, has changed the format football teams play in this season. Rather than grouping teams in divisions based on a power-point system, teams were put in leagues determined by school size with the standings being based solely on wins and losses.

Westhampton Beach plays in League VI this season with Rocky Point, Half Hollow Hills West, Kings Park, Harborfields and Sayville. The top two teams in each league will advance to a conference postseason. Conference III is made up of both League VI and League V, which includes Comsewogue, Deer Park, West Babylon, East Islip, Eastport-South Manor and Hauppauge. The top team in League V will play the second-best team in League VI, while the top team in League VI will play the second best team in League V. The winners of those semifinal games will play for the conference title with the losers playing for third place.

The ’Canes host Hills West in its week two matchup this Friday at 4 p.m. and Schaumloffel said it will be nice to face the Colts at home after facing them on their home turf the past two seasons.

The players and coaches were happy to be playing competitive, meaningful football and look forward to the rest of the season.

“It was great. Even with the limited fans, it was a great atmosphere,” Schaumloffel said. “The cheerleaders were great. It was great to be out here. It was like riding a bike, coming back out here. It felt natural and our kids did a great job.”

“Super grateful, super blessed to have this opportunity,” Capuano said. “I just think we need to clean some things up, offensively especially. That starts on Monday. We have to keep doing what we’re doing, just put our heads down and keep working.”