This week in Montclair football history: Nov. 10-16
Rikki Cook scored the only touchdown in Montclair’s 6-0 win over Phillipsburg in the NJSIAA North 2, Group IV quarterfinals, this week in the year 2000.
As part of our mission to celebrate the past, present and future of Montclair High School football, each Wednesday we’ll be taking a look back at some of the notable moments, biggest wins, and most thrilling finishes in program history from each day that week in history.
NOVEMBER 10, 2000: On a rugged Friday night on a muddy field in Phillippsburg, seventh-seeded Montclair stuns the No. 2 Stateliners, 6-0, in the quarterfinals of the NJSIAA North 2, Group IV playoffs, on Rikki Cook’s 3-yard touchdown run late in the fourth quarter. In a battle of field position and limited offense, the game’s biggest play comes when QB Tyrone Griner hits Isaac Williams for a 36-yard gain inside the P-burg five-yard line. After Phillipsburg stops the Mounties three times, Cook takes a fourth-down pitch to his right and drags a pair of tacklers into the end zone. The two winningest teams in the history of New Jersey high school football (Montclair is No. 1 at 770, Phillipsburg No. 2 with 721) have met just three times, and this is Montclair’s only win: the teams played to a 0-0 tie in 1912, and the Stateliners exacted revenge for this game with a heart-stopping 10-7 win in the 2001 North 2, Group IV championship game.
NOVEMBER 11, 2016: Two touchdowns inside the opening 37 seconds of the first quarter fuels a dominant 40-14 road win for Montclair over Bloomfield in the North 1, Group V quarterfinals at Foley Field. Junior RB Daniel Webb takes the first play of the game 60 yards for his 21st touchdown of the year. After the Bengals fumble the ensuing kickoff, junior QB Tarrin Earle scores on an 11-yard keeper to give Montclair a 14-0 lead before most fans have even found their seats. Earle would find Collin Callahan on an 8-yard TD pass before scrambling for his second scoring run of the game on a 13-yarder to extend the halftime lead to 28-7. Webb would chip in with a pair of second-half touchdowns to put the game out of reach, and he finished the night with a then-career-high 273 yards on 35 carries. A year after Bloomfield handed MHS its first loss in the neighborhood rivalry in 13 years, the win started a streak of seven straight Mountie victories that remains active through 2021.
NOVEMBER 12, 1949: In one of the wildest games in Montclair history given the era and quality of the opponent, quarterback Joe Fortunato throws for 269 yards and a pair of touchdowns as the 8-0 Mounties thrash a one-loss Clifton team, 55-28, before 6,000 fans at Woodman Field. Fortunato’s passing day shattered the program record established 21 years earlier, and it would be 48 years (Brian Roth in 1997) before his record was broken. To this day, Fortunato still has the 11th-highest single-game passing total in the Mountie record books. But this win against a very strong Clifton team was a well-rounded team effort. Touchdown runs by Jack Burke and Royce Flippin sandwich a 68-yard Fortunato-to-Pete Hain touchdown pass as MHS staked out a 20-0 lead in the first quarter. Fortunato would add a TD run of his own plus a 37-yard score to Flippin to extend it to 34-7 at the half. Clifton starts scoring more regularly in the second half, but MHS answers each time, with TD runs by Burke and Flippin, as well as a fumble recovery in the end zone by star defensive lineman Ronald Baltimore. The 83 combined points in this game set a program record that would also not be surpassed until 1997.
NOVEMBER 13, 1976: Both Ira Williams and Mark Tyree rush for 100+ yards as Montclair edges Brick Township, 19-14, in a classic game down the Jersey Shore. After the Green Dragons score first, MHS responds when Tyree (118 yards on 14 carries) catches a screen pass from J.R. D’Alessandro and sprints 70 yards to the end zone in the second quarter. Williams adds onto the lead with a 60-yard touchdown run in the third quarter, and Terry Giles scores what proves to be the winning touchdown on a 25-yard fumble return in the fourth quarter. Williams’ 121-yard rushing effort gives him a program-record 1,278 rushing yards for the season (he’d finish with 1,336, a record that would stand for 23 years) and his sixth 100-yard game.
NOVEMBER 14, 1998: Quarterback Joe Vollen becomes the first 300-yard passer in Montclair history as the Mounties outlast Newark East Side, 35-28, in the first-ever NJSIAA consolation game at Woodman Field. Vollen completes 12-of-18 passes for 301 yards and three touchdowns, all of 50 yards or more, as the Mounties build a three-score lead and hang on in the fourth quarter. Vollen hits Mike Smith on a 65-yarder in the first quarter, and tosses a 55-yarder to Lamont Mitchell and a 54-yarder to Jason Bailey in the third quarter to build a 28-6 lead for the Mounties. Only two other QBs in Mountie history have ever had a 300-yard passing game: Elijah Robinson (in 2014) and Tarrin Earle (once in 2016, twice in 2017).
NOVEMBER 15, 1952: With 7,500 fans packing Clifton Stadium despite a heavy rainstorm to watch New Jersey’s top two teams and a battle of the unbeatens, Aubrey Lewis adds to his legend with two memorable plays as Montclair dominates Clifton, 13-0. The junior All-State standout scores the Mounties’ first touchdown in the first quarter on a 70-yard bomb from QB Bill Lohmann. On the ensuing kickoff, Lewis makes one of the most famous plays in the storied history of MHS football to keep the score at 6-0: Clifton’s Ken Lenert gets into the open field on the return, and has a cordon of blockers escorting him down the right sideline. But Lewis, who is also Montclair’s kickoff specialist and thus the last man for Lenert to beat, hurls his body at the blockers with such force that they fall backwards into Lenert, who sprawls on the ground out of bounds just past midfield. The force of the touchdown-saving hit is enough to force Lewis to leave the game with “deep body bruises,” but one of the all-time great Mountie teams takes care of the rest to earn a shutout win. MHS holds the unbeaten Mustangs to just 54 yards of total offense, and Lohmann’s quarterback sneak with just over 4:00 to play in the fourth quarter ices a famous state-championship-clinching win.
NOVEMBER 16, 1929: Montcair snaps its longest-ever winless streak against a single opponent by defeating Barringer, 25-6, in front of 2,500 fans at Essex Field. The win, which snaps a 20-game winless streak against their Newark rivals dating back to 1908, inspires thousands of fans to stream from Essex Field to Montclair Center in an impromptu parade led by the high school’s marching band and featuring 150 cars. Future head coaching legend Clary Anderson, then a senior halfback, leads MHS to one of its greatest wins of the early 20th century with 110 rushing yards and three touchdowns. Jack Fritts’ short TD plunge less than two minutes after the opening kickoff gives Montclair a lead it would never reliquinsh, but the lead was just 12-6 until Anderson punched in a pair of fourth-quarter touchdowns to pull away. In addition to snapping the streak against Barringer, the win also gives the Mounties a share of the final NJIAA league championship; the ancient league founded in 1895 (and consisting at this point of MHS, Barringer, East Orange, and Dickinson) disbands following the 1929 season, and Montclair would spend its next fifty years of football with an independent schedule.