Ossining won its first Section 1 football championship since 1997 today, 41-0 over a Fox Lane team that had beaten it 35-6 in a turnover-fest less than a month earlier.

Obviously the main difference in the game was that Ossining took care of the football this time, that it was healthier, that it had implemented a better defensive scheme for strong-armed quarterback Mike Mathews. And that the loss to the Foxes had jump-started a turnaround to Ossining’s season.

Also, the difference was that this time the negative momentum got rolling in the wrong direction for the Foxes, who had been shut out for the last half of their win over Eastchester earlier in the week.

That momentum turn began on the Foxes’ first possession when Jajuan Perez, the 6-foot-4, 270-pounder slapped a Mathews pass right back into his face, and it set a tone for the day.

On one sequence late in the first half, Perez batted two more passes, and 6-foot-5 Jeff Ward batted another one, and Christian Federico ended the drive with an interception (the first of two he had) at the goal line.

It had been 10 years since Ossining won a football championship, back in 1997, when head coach Dan Ricci was an assistant to Joe Variano and it beat Suffern for the title. A year earlier, Ossining lost in the championship game, just as it had in 2006.

Ricci remembered that ‘97 team had only 19 players total.

“It was ironman football,� Ricci said.

When Ossining succumbed in the final last year, it hurt. And then came graduation; the cost: 20 seniors. Ricci said he couldn’t compare this team to that one, implying that that one might have been better … and that this one will be really good again next year.

But Ricci completed a rare coaching double-dip. He now has won Section 1 championships as a football coach and a girls basketball coach. And the circumstances around those were similar.

“This is very reminiscent for me of what happened to me in basketball because we lost when (in 2003 to Ursuline in the Class AA final) I had two Division 1 players in Whitney McDonald and Shannon Minter. Shannon graduated and we came back the next year and won it (over Mount Vernon).�

For the record, Ossining got to a third consecutive girls basketball title game, and lost in ‘05 to White Plains.

Today, Ossining celebrated in far more enthusiastic fashion than either Rye or Dobbs Ferry had done the day before. It deserved to celebrate.