“It’s been an incredible ride,” says Anthony Giuliano, Sleepy Hollow High School varsity football’s head coach, reflecting on the team’s historic season as the Horsemen prepare to vie for the state Class B title.
After a playoff drought of nearly a decade, the 12-1 team heads into the Dec. 6 tilt against Rochester’s Monroe Red Jackets in the JMA Wireless Dome.
The Horsemen’s march toward Syracuse has ignited passions across town, from fans filling the stands at away games, to crowds flocking into J.P. Doyle’s to watch playoff victories over Glens Falls and Saugerties.
“It’s almost like the stuff you see in movies or read about, where you’re walking through town and you have a football shirt on and people you don’t know are congratulating you,” says Giuliano, who’s in his second year at the helm. “Before our last few games we’ve had escorts from the police and fire department out of town, and cars are pulling over and people getting out of their cars and cheering as the bus drives by.”
Miracle turnaround
Giuliano and his staff have been architects of a turnaround that began last season, when the team ended a .500 campaign with a competitive 18-14 loss to Pelham that provided an inkling of what was to come.
“We knew the talent we had just in the work ethic in the group over the summer,” he said. “We kind of knew the group we had, we just didn’t exactly know how far it would go.”
The Horsemen opened the 2025 season by winning four of their first five games against playoff-caliber opponents. The fifth contest, a 41-14 victory over a powerful Pearl River squad, was a turning point.
“Once we made it through the gauntlet of tough teams and we beat Pearl River on Homecoming, all of the coaches were like, ‘I think we have something real special here, we have to make sure to take advantage of this and continue to work because we think we have what it takes to go pretty far.’ “
The team’s high-octane offense, which piled up 88 points in the last two playoff games, has been fueled by Brayden Richardson, who ran for 446 yards and five touchdowns in the semifinal against Glens Falls.
Richardson, who missed the two previous seasons with injuries, heads an offensive attack complemented by quarterback Jeremiah Bowen and touchdown machine, wide receiver Gilbert Onwe. The stout offensive line includes returning guard Thaddeus Kromelis and newcomer Daniel Naughton at tackle.
The roster is stacked with eight returning starters on each side of the ball, plus the Estevez twins, linebacker Andre and defensive back Amare, who left Archbishop Stepinac to join the Horsemen.
“There’s just a lot of pieces in place right now that make it a lot easier to coach,” Giuliano says. “We can play off of Brayden and we have other weapons that we can go to offensively. Defensively, there’s not a weak spot on the field. We have 11 guys who are flying to the ball, they’re playing fast, they’re playing physical, so it’s just a really good brand of football to coach.”
Mount Rush-more
What makes Richardson, who’s committed to play for the University of Rhode Island, so hard for defenses to stop?
“It’s how quickly he can move and how big he is. He’s probably around 6-1, 6-2, he’s got to be 210,” Giuliano says. “You look at his legs and he looks like a college running back as a high schooler and just his speed and his ability to cut and cut quickly and get up to top speed very quick.
“It doesn’t look like he’s running because he’s so smooth and so natural,” the coach adds. “So when he’s on his own it almost looks like he’s not trying, but when he’s on the field with 21 other players you can really see him stick out, just because of his size.”
Losing some of the team’s major contributors to graduation (including Richardson, Onwe, the Estevez brothers and Kromelis) means it’s “going to be an uphill climb to get back to the level that we want to compete at” next season, says Giuliano. “You hope that a season like this kind of ignites the community a little bit to get some younger kids signed up for football … Hopefully we can carry this momentum a little bit and continue to be successful.”
But for this year, it’s all about Saturday’s game, a 3 p.m. matchup against 11-0 Monroe, which the coach describes as “a really, really tough opponent, a really athletic team” that also has tallied 48 points in its last two wins. The title game can be livestreamed via nfhsnetwork.com, a paid subscription service.
“We’re going to treat this week like we have every other week, it’s just another football game for us,” said Giuliano. “That seems to be the mentality of the kids, very relaxed in a weird way. They’re not really nervous. It’s almost as if they’ve been here before, which is good.”
‘Nothing short of amazing’
“I’m just so happy that these kids get to experience it, that all the work they put in is paying off,” he said. “The community really wanted to experience something like this and I’m so happy that we have been able to provide that. Their support has been nothing short of amazing. At every game we’re played in the post season, the Sleepy Hollow side of the stands has been way more crowded than the other side, and we feel that on the field. The team feeds off of it and it’s really great to be a part of it.”
