History- Stop n Go

The history of Stop N Go dates back to some of their core guys’ time together at Stony Brook University in the early to mid 2000s, namely Shariq, Farhan, Nabeel, Usman, and Naveed, where these guys were part of weekly Thursday night tackle football games in front of the physics building and later as teamates in intramural flag football representing the Muslim Student Association.

Later, these guys reunited to play in the early seasons of SASL in 2005.  Once the softball season was over, Farhan decided to put together weekly pickup football games with several core Stony guys along with anyone from SASL who was interested.  These games became a fall through spring tradition of sorts.  Almost every year, the games would begin on the first weekend of Ramadan where the guys would play
football in the afternoon leading almost up to the time to break fast.  As the year’s went on, many familiar faces from SA Sports participated in these pickup games which were played at the field by Peck Ave in flushing and shortly there after moved to Cunningham Park near St. Johns.  Rain or shine, sleet or snow, wind or no wind, the games almost always went on every weekend until softball season started.

Overtime, various friends and family of the original participants joined in including but not limited to Usman’s brother Talha, his best friend Suleman, Nabeel’s brothers (Sajeel and Shumail), many of the
Softballers, other Stony Brook alums including Shoeb (on the team last year) and many of Farhan’s friends from his semester at Queens College including Fahad.  The format was typically 2 hand touch, sometimes
flag, and typically 4 on 4.  These games went on for years until some of the guys got busier with family and did not play as much and some of the younger Stony generation took over the organization of the
Cunningham games which still continue once in a while to this day.

It wasn’t until Ammad and Anwar decided to officially expand SAS into the football realm.  Anwar initially contacted Farhan to be on his team.  Farhan immediately began to spread the word about the league and the first person he contacted was Usman.  Based on their long history as friends, competitors, co-captains (of the Softballers), etc, Usman simply told Farhan that he would only join the league if hewas on a team captained by Farhan.  For the betterment of the league Anwar was happy to have Farhan start his own team.  The recruiting began and right away, the names mentioned above were all on board.
Usman brought on softball teammate Ramy (who had his own extensive background in intramural football at St. Johns) and Farhan, wanting to play again with former SWAT teammate Kunal, convinced him to join
Shumail in coming onto Stop n Go.  The final piece was Farhan’s friend Hector, a former HS QB.

Early on in SAFL season 1, though the team came in with high expectations, the results weren’t quite there.  The team had a solid background in playing man to man defense going back to their days of
playing 4 on 4 football, but their captain Farhan insisted on playing zone despite calls from the team to switch to man.   Despite losing some games as a result, there was a bigger picture to consider.  By mid-season they began to mix in man-to-man defense and by season’send, they had become the league’s best defense statistically and were now able to play zone or man seamlessly.   Their defense, lead by ball hawk Suleman, carried them to the championship in the inaugural season.

This season the Stop N Go roster has stayed pretty much the same with exception of the return, or in this case, the debut of Ramy who was lost to a knee injury before season 1 began.  In addition, Hector was lost after only 2 games due to a chronic foot injury.  Talha has stepped up admirably at QB making all the throws he’s capable of and more importantly, limiting his mistakes.   The league however is vastly improved thus the point differential this team enjoyed on their run to the championship last year has not been there this season.
They are still the favorites as we head into the semi-finals and one thing is for sure, no matter the situation, the entire team stays even keel and forces the other team to simply play a better game if they wish to win.

That’s the history on the league’s inaugural champions but they hope to be a part of the SAFL story for years to come.