Game recap: Mounties cruise past East Side for Ramiccio's first victory
Interim head coach Pete Ramiccio, left, talks things over with captains Jordan Williams (6), Max Haley-Coley (4) and Wyatt Tobin (72). BY WIL YOUNG
After Montclair’s players took care of business against Newark East Side for their first win of the 2021 season, they let off a little steam on a sweltering Saturday afternoon at Woodman Field, dousing interim head coach Pete Ramiccio with a bucket of ice water to celebrate his first career victory.
It was a straightforward and economical 35-6 win for the Mounties, who improved to 1-2 this season, 1-1 in the Freedom Red division. Montclair ran just 22 offensive plays — five of which ended in the end zone — as overmatched East Side (0-3, 0-3) drained the clock on each snap.
And after playing two of the top teams in North Jersey, Group 5 (East Orange and Ridgewood) in their first two games, this was a much-needed boost of positivity.
“I’m happier for the kids than I am for me, to tell you the truth,” said a drenched Ramiccio, who is leading the Mountie program for 2021 after 11 seasons as an assistant to head coach John Fiore. “It’s been a struggle the last two weeks against a high level of competition. But we got the job done today, we’ve got Bloomfield coming in next week, and we need to take this energy and keep pushing forward, keep getting better every day.”
On what was a day of light work for the offense, senior running back Jordan Williams led all rushers with 82 yards on 7 carries, including his first two touchdowns of the season, while senior quarterback Solomon Brennan found senior receiver Semaj Adams for a pair of scores through the air. Junior running back Justin Bernal also chipped in with a 33-yard touchdown late in the second quarter.
Montclair’s 102 yards of offense is its fourth-lowest total ever in a win (see “News & Notes,” below), but this was mostly a function of the Mounties’ dominant field position. MHS scored on all five possessions with its starting offensive unit, but they began all five drives inside the East Side 40-yard-line.
After East Side punted to open the game, Williams picked up 11 yards on a 3rd-and-2 to set up Brennan’s 16-yard TD pass to Adams at the 7:04 mark of the first quarter.
Defensive end Elijah Halley recovered a fumble inside the Red Raider 20 on the visitors’ next possession, and Brennan tossed a 3-yard touchdown pass to Adams soon after, extending the MHS lead to 14-0 with 3:04 left in the first.
Williams got into the scoring a minute into the second quarter on a bruising 22-yard run in which he broke several tackles, losing his helmet as he plunged over the goal line with a defender pulling him down. Bernal broke through the middle for his TD run on the first play of Montclair’s next drive.
After sophomore Marshall Koiso opened the second half by returning the kickoff to the East Side 23, Williams added to his totals with a 21-yard touchdown run to make it 35-0.
The Mountie defense did a fine job containing East Side until the final moments of the fourth quarter when the visitors scored their only points on a short TD pass. The Red Raiders gained just 65 yards on 32 plays, almost all of that yardage coming on the final touchdown drive.
MHS will look to climb back to .500 this week as they welcome longtime rival Bloomfield to Woodman Field this Saturday, Sept. 25, at 1 p.m.
This year’s matchup will mark the 102nd meeting all-time in a series that dates back to 1903, highlighted by the Thanksgiving games played annually from 1922-1976 and 1992-2017. MHS leads the all-time series 74-26-1, including six consecutive wins and 18 in the last 19 meetings.
NEWS & NOTES
—As mentioned above, Montclair’s total of 102 offensive yards is the fourth-lowest total for MHS in a win on record. The three games ahead of Saturday’s win were all considerably closer: the Mounties gained just 78 offensive yards in a 6-0 win over Bloomfield in 1959; they had 92 yards in a 7-3 win over Westfield in 1979; and they managed just 94 yards in a 15-7 win over Paterson Eastside in 1986. Since John Fiore took over the program in 2010, MHS had never won a game in which it gained fewer than 175 yards of offense.
—Junior kicker Gage Hammond booted all five of his extra-point attempts successfully Saturday, and he is 10-for-10 on the season on PATs. Hammond also added four touchbacks on six kickoffs (now 9 of 13 on the season) as well.
—Nineteen different Mounties were in on at least one tackle Saturday, led by Jordan Williams’ 4, and 3 apiece from Max Haley-Coley and Isaiah Holm. MHS stopped East Side behind the line of scrimmage on 8 of 32 plays, including a quarterback sack split by Elijah Halley and Ihsan Marshall-Falaise.
—The Mountie defense recovered three turnovers Saturday: Holm intercepted a pass, Halley jumped onto a fumbled snap, and linebacker Bernal forced and then recovered a fumble. The MHS defense has eight take-aways through this season’s first three games.
—Time of possession can be a misleading stat, as seen Saturday: East Side’s slow-paced game resulted in one of the most lopsided time of possession statistics in recent memory: the Red Raiders controlled the ball for 33:36 of the game’s 48 minutes, including a just under 20 of the 24 minutes of the first half.
—Newark East Side has been a struggling program for some time now, and they played Montclair for just the second time in the modern era because, for the first time, the two teams have been placed in the same division (Super Football Conference-Freedom Red). In the teams’ most recent meeting, in a 1998 NJSIAA postseason consolation game, Mountie QB Joe Vollen became the first player in program history to throw for 300 yards in a game, a 35-28 MHS win in which he completed 12 of 18 balls for 301 yards and 3 TDs. The teams also met in 1915, 1917, 1925 and 1926, with Montclair winning three of the four.