Pennsville survives late threat from Penns Grove to retain ‘The Boot’

PENNSVILLE — No football team likes leaving their fortunes to chance, but you could say fate was on Pennsville’s side in its annual rivalry game with Penns Grove Friday night.

Sometime during pregame warm-ups Pennsville seniors Danny Knight and Aiden Clark found a quarter in the grass around the 40-yard-line near the Penns Grove sideline. Just for fun, Clark suggested they flip the coin to determine who was going to win The Boot. Heads, the Eagles win; tails, they lose. (Somehow you got the feeling they were going to flip it until it came out correctly.)

They flipped it once and the usually sure-handed Knight tried to catch the coin on the way down, but it bounced out of his hands and landed on the ground tails. The pair took a do-over and this time it came up heads. They did it again for good measure (more like best 2-of-3 the way it started) and it came up favorably heads again.

As fate would have it, the Eagles went on to win the game, 14-12, to retain the Wildman Willey Boot for the third straight year.

“I wish fate was a little nicer to me and wouldn’t give me a heart attack,” said Pennsville coach Mike Healy, now 3-7 in the series as head coach. 

Actually, the Eagles (3-3) needed someone or something looking out for them. They already had lost three games in the fourth quarter this season and needed to survive a furious Penns Grove rally in this one to avoid another that would’ve spoiled Homecoming. And in that comeback bid, freshman Ayden Epstein stopped a potential game-tying two-point conversion and Grady Sanders shut down a reverse on fourth down deep in Pennsville territory that ended the Red Devils’ bid for the winning touchdown.

The game began in a steady rain that limited both teams’ offensive production in the first half. Penns Grove scored first when Terrell Thomas broke free for a 22-yard touchdown run, but the Red Devils dropped the two-point conversion. The Eagles took a 7-6 lead 92 seconds before halftime when Jake Layfield threw the first of his two touchdown passes to C.J. Johnson and Dante Cummings hit the extra point.

Beyond the touchdown run, the Eagles held Penns Grove’s Thomas tandem to 138 combined yards rushing. Terrell Thomas had 61 yards on 12 carries and Jaivon Thomas had 77 yards on 16 carries. The touchdown run was the Red Devils’ second-longest offensive play of the game.

“They’re a good duo over there, probably Sonic and Knuckles, that’s what I would call them,” Sanders said referring to the classic video game characters who combine speed and glide to thwart their opponents. “They run very hard.”

The Eagles had a hard runner of their own. Tristan Horner rushed for a game- and career-high 114 yards to give the Eagles their first 100-yard rusher of the season. He should have had their go-ahead touchdown, but fumbled at the goal line in the second quarter.

“It was good to see him that type of day,” Healy said. “He runs tough, so I was really happy to see that from him.”

“Overall I’ve just been feeling like the season hasn’t gone my way,” Horner said. “Starting off against Woodstown I think I had like 20 yards. It’s gotta click at some point. You’ve gotta get it moving. Coming into this game I was hyped. I was ready. It’s Penns Grove Week. It’s rivalry week. You’ve got to turn it up.” 

Layfield’s second touchdown pass to Johnson, a 44-yarder early in the third quarter, extended the Eagles lead to 14-6. It stayed that way until Jaivon Thomas picked off Layfield and returned it 30 yards for a touchdown. The Red Devils went for 2 looking to tie, but Epstein caught Thomas from behind to keep Pennsville in front. Thomas got banged up on the play, eventually leaving him unavailable for the team’s final drive.

“These are the type of game that we live for,” Penns Grove coach Damian Ware said. “We live for these games where it’s a tight game, where it’s a one score game – not even a one-score game, a two-point game. It came down to extra points in this game. We didn’t get either extra point, they got two extra points, they win the game. It’s tough because it comes down to extra points and that’s something we been working on. But we played tough though, we battled, we grinded, so I’m not mad at these guys.”

Despite the two touchdown passes, it was an off night for Layfield. The Pennsville quarterback had thrown for more than 1150 yards and been intercepted just four times in 158 pass attempts in the first five games of the season, but on this rainy night he was just 6-of-12 for 94 yards and was intercepted four times.

The Red Devils had one last shot to get the game-winner and remain undefeated and they took up almost all of the final 7:28 to complete the task. They eventually got it to the Pennsville 12 with 2:08 to play. Terrell Thomas was stopped for no gain on second down and then the Red Devils threw an incomplete pass along the sideline on third.

They had a play lined up on the do-or-die fourth down Ware was confident was going to work, but they never got to run it because they were hit with a false start. On the restart they ran a reverse to Savior Allah that was supposed to turn into a pass, but Allah never got it off as Sanders met him head-on near the right sideline to kill the threat with one minute to go.

“The last drive we were getting some things that we were looking for all game, we just started executing them,” Ware said. “We had a play called that I though was going to be very successful before we got the false start and that kind of pushed us back behind the sticks. We tried to run a little something (on the last play) and it just didn’t work out.”

“I’ve played football my whole entire life, I know Penns Grove runs it,” Sanders said. “I saw the reverse coming. I told my teammates, but just a lot of years of football and knowing the situation and going down there and making a play. I don’t really think (was thinking it was for The Boot) in the moment; it’s just another football play. You’ve got to take every play as the most important play and as it turns out it was the most important play.”

It wasn’t the first time in the game Sanders thwarted a Penns Grove threat. He recovered a fumble to end a drive in the first quarter and broke up a fourth-down pass inside the red zone in the final two minutes of the third quarter.

After Sanders’ stop in the fourth quarter Layfield took two knees to run out the clock and touch off a celebration that was equal parts joy and relief.

“I’m so proud of how (they played) defensively on that drive,” Healy said. “We gave up a few yards today but every time they got near the end zone for the most part we buckled down and did our job. Couldn’t be happier, but we’ve gpt to stop putting ourselves in situations where games are so close. We need to get to that point we’re not making mistakes and we’re taking advantage of opportunities.”

Pennsville 14, Penns Grove 12

SCORING SUMMARY
PG-Terrell Thomas 22 run (pass failed), 7:30 1Q
PV-C.J. Johnson 14 pass from Jake Layfield (Dante Cummings kick), 1:32 2Q
PV-C.J. Johnson 44 pass from Jake Layfield (Dante Cummings kick), 10:03 3Q
PG-Jaivon Thomas 30 interception return (run failed), 10:59 4Q