Now that the season is all over and three Shore Conference teams out of eight are busy polishing championship trophies, all that’s left is selecting the DigitalSports Legends of the Fall team and working on the final Top 10 and this year’s Stumpy Awards before it’s on to basketball. We also will have the Top 10 Plays of the Year for you.
It’s definitely time to wrap things up after a whirlwind couple of weeks of previews, games, feature stories and videos. Not that it wasn’t fun, but as someone remarked upon walking in the Spring Lake mansion and seeing me typing amid the scribbled-on legal pads, magazines, stats, technological equipment, empty Gatorade bottles, Gummy Bear wrappers, winter jackets and other stuff littered about: “Uh, dude, it’s getting a little Unabomber-ish in here.”
I’ll start with Saturday’s action, as I was trying to keep feeling in my hands and feet while at Toms River North’s thrilling 22-19 comeback win over Mainland that completed a 12-0 season. The big subplot of the game was the ejection of senior linebacker Zach Kane, one of the Shore’s top players, shortly before halftime.
I just hope for Kane’s sake that this does not affect a potential scholarship offer because there is a little bit of a pattern of behavior here, as he was ejected from the Jackson game last year and sat out the second half of the consolation game against Mainland last year because of his behavior in the first half. I’m not going to pile on a teenager at this point, and I’m sure Kane feels bad enough about it already, but hopefully this will be the final lesson for him because it put his teammates in a tough spot. There certainly is no doubt that he is talented, but you can’t make plays when you’re not on the field. When the game was over and everyone had cleared off the field, Kane was just laying flat on his back all alone next to the bench before his teammates yelled at him to get up and join them on their way to a locker room celebration.
As for the game, it was bizarre. I’ve never seen more tipped passes or wacky interceptions, or plays where you’re just trying to figure out who has the ball. Obviously, Toms River North’s defense was tremendous as usual, as I wrote in my column. I have to say I was very impressed with Mainland’s defense as well. Their 315-pounder in the middle, Lance Miller, was moving people at will up front, and their linebackers were excellent at running down ballcarriers and getting their hands up in passing lanes to bat down passes from Toms River North QB Anthony Penna.
Penna came up with the two biggest plays of the game with a 45-yard bomb to Pat Szukics and a TD pass to Adam Carey before topping himself with an underhanded flip to Carey for the two-point conversion. Penna definitely has as much guts as any quarterback in the Shore when it comes to making a big play at crunch time.
As for the other game of the day, I have to say I was surprised to hear Lacey lost 23-20 to Shawnee because the Lions had been playing so well heading into the South Jersey Group III final. It’s not shocking because Shawnee is a traditional South Jersey power, but I just thought this was Lacey’s year for the second straight year.
Certainly it looks like the disputed Andrew Burt touchdown/Shawnee interception play at the end of the half made a big difference. You need to check out the interview with Lacey junior RB/LB Tom Rickmers if you haven’t seen it yet. Just a hard-nosed kid giving a pretty blunt assessment of the game.
As for Sunday’s games at Rutgers Stadium, they were just a tough way to end it for the Shore Conference.
An interesting thing at Rumson’s 20-14 heartbreaker against Carteret was that one of the louder contingents rooting for the Bulldogs was a group clad in green and white. That’s right, Long Branch’s fans were showing some Shore solidarity and cheering loudly for Rumson.
The details of the Carteret game and the aftermath and the Bulldogs’ feelings toward the 61-0 RBC game are all addressed in the game story and column on our homepage, and now the big argument concerns the rankings. You go one of two ways. You say Rumson is out and RBC is in, or you say Rumson stays for wins over Holmdel and state champion Asbury Park despite sitting its starters against the Caseys. One thing for sure is that there were probably more than a few smiling faces bearing clothing with shamrocks on it when Rumson got denied at the 6-yard line with 21 seconds left against Carteret to give the Ramblers the win.
The other notion was that QB Matt Wassel and others didn’t look sharp in the beginning because they hadn’t played in two weeks. I can see that argument, but I don’t know if I buy it because it was hard for any quarterback to be sharp in the freezing cold. Plus, I think Carteret’s offense ate up such large chunks of time that the Rumson offense was sitting there going into a deep freeze before it got back on the field. It can be argued six ways to Sunday on both sides, but that’s my feeling.
As for Long Branch’s 20-6 loss to Moorestown, that Moorestown team was the best of any team that I saw in the state finals against Shore Conference teams. They had speed to burn, but the most impressive player was fullback/linebacker Dominic Sebastiani. He walloped Long Branch running back Travis Patterson on one play, and was just a force on both sides of the ball. I also was amazed by Moorestown’s Mikey Reynolds, who ran back the opening kickoff for a touchdown. Up close, Reynolds seriously looks Pop Warner-sized, like he is about 5-foot-5 and 145 pounds, yet he holds his own out there.
It also was fun watching the matchup between Long Branch WR/CB Donte Gilliard and Moorestown WR/CB Bryan Burnham. Just two great athletes trying to top one another. Gilliard got one interception, and Burnham got one touchdown. I think Gilliard, who had 8 interceptions this season, deserves some consideration for first-team all-state as a cornerback. As for the Green Wave as a whole, as I wrote in my column, what they’ve done the last four years is amazing, and to end it with a 10-win season deserves respect.
I would also like to commend Rumson’s Ryan Korn and Ryan Kirchner for manning up and doing interviews following that brutal loss, and the same goes for Long Branch’s Isaiah Hall, Travis Patterson, Mike Luke and Tajh Miller. It can’t be easy to do when you come up short of something you’ve worked so hard for, so we appreciate it. Also, as Keansburg coach Brian Kmak is fond of saying, “If the worst thing that happens to you in your life is that you lost in a state final, then you’ve had a pretty good life.”
I stood on the sidelines for the Long Branch game, and I highly recommend Toast-T-Toes, which are the foot equivalent of those handwarmer packs, if you have to stand outside in the freezing cold for any length of time. They worked out well considering that it was one of those days where all I could think of was ending up like one of those mountain climbers with the dazed look on their face and toes and fingers that have turned black and have to be lopped off. The Long Branch game was definitely better than the RFH game because it was raining in the first game, which was then turning to ice. A real winning combination.
Finally, if my DigitalSports colleague, Bob Badders, covered one of your games this weekend, my condolences. He takes home the Grim Reaper award, as the Shore went 0-4 in the four games that he was at. Next year, we’ll just have him dress all in black for every state sectional final.
That’s all for now, and stay tuned this week for more end-of-the-season wrap-up stuff.
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