Annual Awards
Nassau County has a long history or recognizing the best players and coaches for each year. Below you can see the latest recipients and links to lists of the annual awards. You can also see reports by team. |
Tom Flatley Award
The Tom Flatley Award will be given annually, beginning in 2020, to a male Nassau County student-athlete that competed at a high level in the sports of football and lacrosse throughout his high school career.
Other criteria that will be considered includes athletic and peer leadership, academic success, school and/or community service and additional extracurricular participation. The winner will be selected by a committee of coaches from both the NCFCA and NCLCA, as well as Sewanhaka High School alumni.
The Tom Flatley Award is named after one of the most successful football and lacrosse coaches in New York State history, the late Tom Flatley. Few, if any, coaches in state history have had the success that he did in multiple sports for over five decades. In 1979 he became the head lacrosse coach at Sewanhaka, replacing legendary coach Bill Ritch. Though his tenureship as the head lacrosse coach lasted only six years, his teams won 131 games, with a winning percentage of eighty-six and were the 1981 Long Island Champions- the first and only time the Indians ever won the LIC.
In 1983, Coach Flatley took his coaching talents to Garden City. As the head football coach from 1985-2014, Flatley’s squads won eighteen Nassau County championships, appearing in fourteen Long Island championships with five victories. The Trojans were voted Rutgers Cup champions on four occasions and had six undefeated seasons. From 1990 to 1992, the Trojans won thirty consecutive games, one of the longest streaks in Nassau football history. Coach Flatley’s career win-loss record in football at Garden City stands at 264 wins, 44 losses and seven ties. Coach Flately’s winning percentage of eighty-six percent is the highest of any football coach in Long Island history. In addition the New York State Sportswriters crowned Garden City the #1 ranked team in the state five times.
While dominating in the fall, lacrosse never left Flatley’s life. Serving as the Junior Varsity coach at Garden City from 1988 to 2019, first for Doc Dougherty and later for former player Steve Finnell, Tom’s teams had an overall record of 357 wins, 31 losses and two ties. During his career Flatley coached many student-athletes in high school that later became outstanding coaches in their own right. The current active list includes Long Island Metropolitan Lacrosse Hall of Famers Joe Baccarella and Dennis Bonn, and the afore-mentioned Steve Finnell. A graduate of both Garden City High School (1957) and Lehigh University (1961), Flatley was an outstanding educator who taught Social Studies in the Sewanhaka School District for over thirty years.
| YEAR | AWARD WINNER | TEAM | POSITION | 2024 | Michael Melkonian | South Side | FO/M | 2023 | Stevie Finnell | Garden City | Midfield | 2022 | Jack Cascadden | Garden City | FO/Mid | 2022 | Brendan Staub | Garden City | Defense | 2021 | Aidan Mulholland | Manhasset | Midfield | 2020 | Hugh Kelleher | MacArthur | Midfield | 2020 | Nick LiCalzi | South Side | D/LSM |
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