These Hewlett football players helped stranded motorists during a rainstorm

After Hewlett High School's varsity football game against Plainedge was canceled due to the six inches of rain that battered the Five Towns — and the rest of the metropolitan area — on Sept. 29, players watched video in the locker room to prepare for the eventual rescheduled game.

When they were ready to head home, Danny Sheinin, Mekhi Jean-Baptiste, Zane Frederick-Branch, Frantz Limage, Thierry Labossiere and Lucas Garzona piled into Sheinin’s SUV, but they hadn’t gone far when they saw three cars stuck in high water on Harris Avenue, near Gibson Boulevard, whose occupants needed help.

Sheinin, the captain of the football team, described the scene as “hectic.” The cars couldn’t move, and there was a cacophony of horns as other vehicles tried to make their way around them.

“We all looked at what had happened and were like, ‘Let’s go help them!’” Sheinin recalled.

Wasting no time, the teammates parked the SUV, took their shoes off, rolled up their pants and, amid the pouring rain, pushed the stuck vehicles out of the way.

Then they made their way walking to Peninsula Boulevard, where they found more marooned vehicles in the middle of the busy roadway, ranging from a Toyota Prius to a BMW X7 SUV. They helped a panicking woman whose SUV was taking on water, which was ruining her valuables and some important documents, she told the boys.

Frederick-Branch comforted the woman, assuring her that he and his friends would move her vehicle to higher ground and retrieve her valuables from it.

“I never had to comfort someone like that, but when you see people who need help and know you can, your instincts tell you to help,” Frederick-Branch recounted. “She was, like, panicking, and didn’t know what to do, so the first thing I thought of was just making sure she was OK.”

The players pushed the woman’s vehicle out of traffic to the side of the road, and Frederick-Branch wanted to do more.

“Once you get that first heartfelt thank-you and hug, it just becomes addicting,” he said. “It makes you want to do more, and that’s when we started to help more and more cars.”

Over the course of an hour and a half, as the rain continued, the teammates pushed nearly 10 vehicles out of the water and onto the side of Peninsula Boulevard.

Many of the boys have played football since middle school, and have learned how to work together as a team, some leading, others following and all adjusting to changing conditions.

“It teaches you the respect aspect,” Sheinin said of what football had taught him. “We’re all a family. We practice together, hang out together and work together, and it just shows our teamwork and patience with each other.”

Hewlett High varsity football coach John Palladino, who has coached for over 10 years, said he wasn’t surprised by what his players had done as word of their exploits made its way around the school the following Monday.

“I was pleased to hear about it,” Palladino said. “This team is full of character, and I’m not surprised the kids did that on their own, because it says so much about them.”

At Woodmere Middle School, there’s a new initiative called “Gotcha!” for students who are caught doing an act of kindness, and recognized by a staff member with a “Gotcha” card posted in the main hallway. The school honored the football players for their actions, and Sheinin said it was all about coming together for their community.

“We were just doing it to help,” he said, “but it’s nice to know people saw us, and are thanking us for something that we did.”