BY MARLEY SEAMAN
"Could this clock be any slower?" asked Baldwin football coach Steve Carroll.
There were exactly four minutes left in the Nassau County Conference I championship game, and Carroll's team had an insurmountable 25-point lead. The high school's athletic director, Ed Ramirez, told him to enjoy it. Four minutes was nothing - just the sweet coda to a half century of waiting.
When those minutes finally ticked away, Baldwin had earned its first-ever Nassau County championship. Carroll, by then cold and wet from a Gatorade-and-ice shower, had a title after 18 years with the team.
His Bruins lost to Farmingdale in the Nassau finals in both 1999 and 2002. The 2002 defeat was a shutout, and the 1999 loss was even more heartbreaking: Baldwin lost 25-18 in overtime. "We had the game, too," Carroll remembered. "We were winning all night long until the last two minutes, and then let it slip through."
Baldwin also lost in the conference finals in 1984, shut out by a Hempstead team that went on to win the next four Nassau titles.
Carroll said it was "almost a miracle" that his team reached the county finals undefeated. It was definitely history. The last time Baldwin finished a regular season without a loss was 1953, when the team was still known as the Golden Wave and the coach was George A. Craig, whose name now adorns the high school field. Craig coached in Baldwin for 25 years, and his 130 wins are the most in team history. He was named Coach of the Year for his efforts in 1953, and the team brought home the Rutgers Cup as the best team in Nassau County - an honor this year's team hopes to repeat.
Craig was "an innovator and a progressive," said Baldwin school board member B.A. Schoen. "He was not only a football coach, but he really took physical education, professionalized it, and also advanced girls' athletics."
The Golden Wave was undefeated that year at 7-0, and its home games were played at Gardner's Field. Lead by co-captains Bob D'Auria and Chuck Gondoli, the team won every game by at least 13 points. No Baldwin squad has finished the year without a loss since then, and the last team to come close was the 1970 squad, which lost to Sewanhaka in the South Shore finals. While the Bruins have one more mountain to climb - they will face Mastick's William Floyd High School in the Long Island championship game on Saturday - they have proven themselves worthy successors to the Golden Wave.
Gondoli, a running back, was the star of the 1953 team. His 17 touchdowns that year were a school record, as were his 102 points. Kevin Coccerman tied those records in 1961, but Gondoli's stay on top of the record book lasted 52 years. This year's star runner and co-captain, senior Ricky Manigat, broke the touchdown record against Hempstead on Nov. 5. He now has 21 touchdowns in 10 games.
The Golden Wave faced one of their toughest tests in their season finale, the rivalry game against Freeport. That contest was tied at 7 at halftime, and it was a 50-yard run by Gondoli that sealed the win and the perfect season. This year it was Manigat who put Massapequa away for good in the championship game with a 52-yard run, increasing Baldwin's lead to 24-7. Manigat was the hero of the title game, carrying the ball 42 times for a jaw-dropping 316 yards and three touchdowns. He also played defensive back, and bailed out his team with a crucial sack as Massapequa appeared poised to make the game close.
Another key part of the historic Golden Wave squad was a junior named Bob Reifsnyder. One of only two Baldwin alumni to play in the pros - the other is Brandon Moore, currently a linebacker for the San Francisco 49ers - Reifsnyder won the Tom Thorp Award as Nassau Player of the Year in 1954 and went on to star at the Naval Academy. He played offensive and defensive tackle, and in 1957 he was an All-American and won the Maxwell Award as College Player of the Year.
Reifsnyder was elected to the College Football Hall of Fame in 1997, after Carroll nominated him. A knee injury cut short his pro career, but he became one of the most accomplished coaches in Long Island history. He won championships with Berner High School in Massapequa (now a junior high school) in Nassau, the Friends Academy, a private school in Locust Valley, and at Patchogue-Medford.
There Reifsnyder "turned around a program that won one game every year to a two-time Suffolk County champion," said Carroll.
The turnaround in Baldwin this year was almost equally dramatic. Only three of last season's starters were members of this team. But instead of rebuilding, a team that was expected to finish in the middle of the pack has made history. The '53 Golden Wave and the Bruins of today will be forever linked by their success.
"We can only hope these football players, who are great guys, go on to have the kind of success in the rest of their lives that the guys from '53 did," said Schoen.
