FAST FINISH CORRALS REGULATORS' FIRST D-II CROWN

If the NCTFL regular season was nine weeks long, the Wantagh Regulators would not have made the playoffs. But coming back from the edge of elimination to mount a championship run was no daunting task for a team that would have folded if the preseason schedule started a week earlier in August.

The Regulators became one of the more unlikely Division II champions in memory by upsetting the top-seeded and previously unbeaten Franklin Square Falcons, 25-9, in the Touch Bowl Dec. 13 at John Burns Park. It’s the second crown for the Regulators, who are the first team to win titles in both Division III and Division II.

The Regulators, who lost four in a row to fall to 3-5 after eight games, ended the season with five straight wins in which they outscored the opposition 115-34. The Regulators scored just 87 points in their first eight games.

“They finally came together as a team—everybody realized they’ve got to work together, and they knew if we worked together we could do it,” Regulators coach Bill Ericsson said. “And I think the last, especially, two or three games, they saw what they can do.”

Of course, the Regulators had a pretty good excuse for needing most of the season to gel. After going 1-9 last year in Division I, the Regulators’ roster dwindled to five during the off-season, and as practice for this season began, team co-founder and co-captain Matt Ericsson began preparing himself for the possibility the Regulators would have to cease operations.

But franchises such as the Freeport Fire and Herricks Hellcats pitched in to help the Regulators by recommending the Regulators to players who were looking to join the league. Little did those rivals know they were creating a champion. Of course, the Regulators had little idea their on-the-fly mix was headed for glory either, until Billy Golden—one of the players the Fire referred to the Regulators—took over as the starting QB and turned the offense into the most dangerous unit in Division II.

Golden, a former starter with the Levittown Chiefs and Brookville Brawlers, produced a Touch Bowl performance as brilliant as it was methodical in winning MVP honors. Golden completed his first nine passes, directed three long scoring drives in the first half on the way to staking the Regulators to a 19-0 lead and finished 27-of-37 for 364 yards and four TDs. He had seven completions of 19 yards or longer and also maximized the Regulators’ possessions—and damaged the Falcons’ comeback hopes—by continually letting the play clock fall under five seconds before snapping the ball.

WR Vern Howard had six catches for 92 yards and two TDs for the Regulators while HBs Vlad Ashurov (73 yards) and George Lee (57 yards) also had six grabs apiece. WRs Tovoraus Anderson and Jack Murphy each caught a TD pass.

“The game plan was short passes, especially into the wind, and just move the ball little by little and keep their offense off the field,” Golden said. “I think we snapped everything between five and three seconds. And it worked.”

After an errant snap on the first play of the game, Golden completed five straight passes for 90 yards and found Howard for a three-yard TD that put the Regulators up 7-0 with less than six minutes gone. The Regulators turned the ball over on downs near midfield on their next possession, but Golden opened the second quarter by leading a 10-play, 65-yard drive that ate up more than eight minutes and ended with a six-yard TD pass to Howard that extended the lead to 13-0.

Golden delivered the decisive blow after the Regulators forced the Falcons to turn the ball over on downs at the Regulators’ 23-yard-line with 1:17 left. Golden was 4-of-5 in marching the Regulators 77 yards in less than a minute and increasing the lead to 19-0 with a 27-yard TD pass to Anderson.

A series of mistakes by the Regulators in the third quarter allowed the Falcons to crawl back into the game. The Regulators committed three penalties and one bad snap on their first seven plays of the period, and the eighth play was an ill-advised end-around in the end zone that resulted in Howard getting tagged for a safety by Greg Reddock.

On the first play following the free kick, Reddock—taking his first snap of the game at QB—evaded multiple tags in racing up the left sideline for a 44-yard touchdown. Joe Welsh’s PAT kick pulled the Falcons within 17-9 with 1:08 left in the third.

Golden led the Regulators from their own 23-yard-line to the Falcons’ 17-yard-line in just four plays before the drive stalled and the Regulators turned the ball over on downs at the Falcons’ five-yard-line with 10 minutes left. But the Regulators’ defense came up with one more stop of the high-flying Falcons to seal the championship.

The Falcons gained just six yards on the subsequent possession and turned the ball over on downs at their own 11 with 6:58 to play. Four plays later, Golden tossed a seven-yard TD pass to Murphy for the Regulators’ final score.

DB Mo Myers intercepted Falcons QB Sean O’Connor on the last play of the game, which was an appropriate coda to a frustrating day for the Falcons, who led the entire NCTFL with 260 points in the regular season and were rarely threatened in winning their first 11 games.

But the Regulators turned the Falcons’ offense into a piecemeal one, allowing them to gain a respectable 236 yards yet surrendering just two plays of 20 yards or more—both of which were runs by Reddock. Falcons quarterbacks had more success on the ground, where Reddock and O’Connor combined for 150 rushing yards, than in the air, where O’Connor was 12-of-26 for 97 yards and the interception and Reddock was 0-for-2.

In addition, the Falcons were 0-for-6 on fourth down conversions. Anderson had seven tags on defense for the Regulators while Paul McCormick had a sack.

“The bottom line is that for 11 games we didn’t let anybody beat us, and to have it taken away from you in that last game is disappointing,” O’Connor said. “But at the same time, we can’t take anything away from [the Regulators]. They came out from the first whistle and did what they had to do.”

The Ericssons know what they won’t have to do this off-season: Worry about the future of the franchise.

“It just means a lot to me, because I made a whole bunch of friends by just grabbing ballplayers, you know?” Matt Ericsson said. “It was proof to me as a person that we could come together as a team and show everybody who left us behind and said that we weren’t going to be able to come back and do anything that we are still alive. The Regulators are still alive and we’re not going anywhere. We’ll be back again next year.”