South Shore lineman Elijah Watkins never thought he would be selected to play in an elite game like the Empire Challenge, but he was proven wrong when he was tapped for this year’s prestigious senior football all-star game.
“It means a lot for me coming from a lower-division school,” Watkins said. “No one else from my school got picked. I feel honored to play in this game. It’s like a dream. I watched it last year I looked at it like I would never be one of these guys.”
South Shore’s second-straight win of the Public School Athletic League Bowl Conference title success helped earn the offensive guard and head coach Matt Ciquera a chance to be a part of the annual battle for bragging rights between the stars of New York City’s and Long Island’s top high school football programs to benefit the Boomer Esiason Foundation for cystic fibrosis.
Ciquera said Watkins was representing many deserving players in the school’s rising program, which is moving up to a higher-level conference next year.
“All the kids in my program worked really hard,” said Ciquera, who is helping coach the linebackers. “We have Elijah in the game, but I have a handful of kids who worked just as hard as he did over the last four years. Hopefully he can hold the flag for South Shore.”
The city team may have lost 24–18 on the Hofstra gridiron June 25, but Watkins did lead New York’s linemen to victory in a chicken wing-eating contest with their Long Island counterparts following practice on June 21.
He and his fellow linemen from the five boroughs won by eating 7.98 pounds of wings, compared to 6.67 for Long Island. Watkins and his partner Jose Duncan of Erasmus Hall were one of the only groups to finish their entire tray of wings. His strategy was simple.
“Just don’t stop, don’t even chew,” Watkins said. “Just suck off the bone, just hawk it down. It was just strategy. We strategized before we started. Jose was going to get the right side of the plate I get the left. Just finish strong.”
Watkins did just that in his career at South Shore. He had 25 tackles and a fumble recovery on defense last season and will attend Globe Tech junior college in the fall. He was a key member of the South Shore’s consecutive championships, and attributed the team’s success to Ciquera.
“We bought into his plan,” Watkins said. “We just worked hard,” Watkins said. “It is a system of no excuses. Everything has a consequence.”
New York City and Lincoln coach Shawn O’Conner, whose team won the city conference crown last season, has admired the job Ciquera and Watkins have done at South Shore, and he was happy to have them apart of the New York City team.
“He can play everything,” O’Connor said of Watkins. “He can play the guard, tackle and center for us. He is just eager, wants to win, and practices hard.”
It was just Watkins making the most of an opportunity he never thought he would get.
