It’s time for sectional championships this weekend and the Friday night weather is not promising. Ramapo moved their game with Northern Highlands to Thursday night and I plan on attending. Another Thursday night game is West Orange at Phillipsburg. Other games are being switched to Thursday or Saturday, so check the game you want to see before you go….In case you haven’t noticed, Franklin’s football team was in the South bracket of the Power Rankings, yet they are hosting the North finals next weekend…..What a good atmosphere at the Wood-Ridge-Cedar Grove game last Friday night! It was small-town football at its finest with the many from Wood-Ridge in attendance and Cedar Grove traveling well. The fact the game was close didn’t hurt matters, either….It would be hard to find a wilder ending then Edison’s win over North Brunswick with Edison successfully recovering two consecutive onside kicks in the last three minutes of the game, leading to the winning points, including the game-winning field goal by Selbin Sabino with 13 seconds left for a 33-31 victory ….Another game I would have loved to have been to was Randolph-Wayne Valley, a game Randolph won, 31-28, on a game-winning field goal by Aidan Flowers with three seconds left. On the previous play, Randolph fumbled with quarterback Sean Clark diving to recover in heads-up fashion….Other good ones were West Orange beating Ridgewood in overtime, Gloucester City’s 14-13 win over Haddonfield, Seneca’s 29-28 win over Highland to stay undefeated, and Lenape’s 21-20 win over Atlantic City….One nose guard who is up there with the best is Hillside’s Zaimir Hawk. He disrupts things in the middle and he showed his athleticism when he returned an interception for a touchdown against River Dell….One web site that does a great job with broadcasting games on Youtube is Morris Sussex Sports. There have been evenings when they had as many as nine games being broadcast with teams from either Morris or Sussex County….I am not the baseball fan I used to be for a number of reasons and I rarely watched my favorite team, the Yankees, this year. Their loss to the Houston Astros didn’t even bother me and I don’t know whether to be happy or sad about that….There were some big performances last weekend in the playoffs and consolations. Bryan Johnson of Woodbury was 8-11-222-3 passing, Jacob Zamot of Millville was 20-30-294-2, Earnest Reevey of Long Branch was 25-42-282-2, Jack Grusser of Ramapo was 18-26-274-4, Van Weber of Rutherford was 9-11-254-3, Scott Lynch of Audubon was 26-41-270-3, and Alameen Watkins of Plainfield was 12-20-331-3….On the ground, Rashawn Watkins of Weequahic rushed for 304 and 2 touchdowns on 24 carries, Micah Ford of Toms River North was 21-257-3, Kenny Smith of Hammonton was 26-209-3, Stefano Montella of West Morris was 14-204-5, Matt Sims of Brearley was 28-199-3, Mark Boyd of Union City was 13-192-3, Wayne Adair of Delsea was 9-167-4, Thaylor Sibblies of Newton was 10-152-1, Jabriel Mace of Mainland was 12-137-1, DJ McCrary of Snyder was 26-305-5, and Jake Lowry of Summit was 26-253-5….Top receiving performances came from Jack Garbolino with 9 receptions for 165 yards, Landon DePrima caught 3 for 157 yards and 1 touchdown, Brendan Fitzsimmons caught 5 for 151 and 2 scores, and Saboor Karriem of West Orange caught 11 for 135 yards and 2 touchdowns….DePrima also filled in at quarterback for Grusser for a few weeks ago, including a big game against Old Tappan, handing them their only loss….That’s all for this week! I will be back with more bull next week!!
- Most stats come from nj.com – some from Maxpreps