Monroe-Woodbury built itself into a football monster.
It won a state title and went to four straight – count 'em, four straight – state Class AA championship games. Along the way, it forged a 63-game winning streak against local competition that left folks shocked even when the rare opponent managed to lose by only single digits.

But each trip to the state tournament, each season sweeping its local schedule, brought higher expectations. These expectations brought heavy-duty pressure – from the community, from the media, from family and friends, from within – on a group of teens sorting through the emotional swings of adolescence against a cruel dose of recent tragedies within the school and community.

Then came the ridiculously rainy Friday evening 13 days ago, when Newburgh Free Academy traveled to Central Valley and left with a 7-0 win to snap Monroe-Woodbury's 63-game streak.
It served as the Nor'easter to this past Friday's hurricane, when Kingston upset Newburgh 3-0 to send
Monroe-Woodbury crashing straight out of the Section 9 Class AA playoffs.   

Adding fate to the equation, Kingston needed a 49-yard field goal with 5:07 left, the kid's first of the year, a Newburgh kid dropping a certain touchdown pass, another Newburgh kid dropping a very catchable TD pass and another Newburgh kid stranded at Kingston's 4-yard line as time ran out.   

Monroe-Woodbury, a team that had almost solely relied on skill for much of the past decade,
suddenly had been handed one heavy sprinkling of bad luck.

The playoffs will have an unusual feel on Saturday without Monroe-Woodbury,
which has won the last seven Section 9 Class AA titles. Kingston and Newburgh made it out of Division I and Warwick and Washingtonville out of D-II.
Monroe-Woodbury, instead, plays a non-league game on Friday at Minisink Valley,
teams that have had some wonderful battles in recent years.

This has been a tragic year for Monroe-Woodbury and its football program. Two students, one a member of the football team, committed suicide in January. Another player's dad died in February. Coach Pat D'Aliso, who lost his son, Patrick, to suicide in 2004, long ago learned the relatively minimal importance of winning football games. When the shocking reaction to Monroe-Woodbury's loss
came flooding toward D'Aliso – including calls of condolence – he felt the pinch
of others having lost perspective.   

Sure it might have seemed like D'Aliso long ago had lost some perspective on the game given
the immense block of time he devotes to preparing his team.
But that is D'Aliso's Type-A personality at work. He can't bear to witness his team going
onto the field without being prepared to the absolute best of his ability.

And so when Monroe-Woodbury experienced the last of three difficult moments this
season – its first regular-season loss (to Xaverian) in eight years, its loss of the streak
and missing the playoffs – D'Aliso reacted each time the way I remember him reacting after losing state title games. He accepted it calmly and moved on.

But he hurt for the kids. And so D'Aliso and his staff went about making sure they realized that,
really, guys, it is, in the grand scheme of things, only a football game.

"I think overall, they have handled it very well,'' D'Aliso said, "as well as 16-year-olds can handle it.''    

D'Aliso moves his focus to rooting for our section's eventual AA winner in the state tournament.
It will be an odd sight, for sure. But it's a reminder that these are just kids and kid athletes,
and even the very best of them lose.  

             Published: 2:00 AM - 10/27/11       kgleason@th-r ecord.com