Strong second half lifts Salem to fourth straight win
CARNEYS POINT – With all the adversity the Woodstown football team has faced this season, including the latest patch Saturday, all the near misses and all the injuries, some might think it borderline miraculous the Wolverines were even in a position to win a division title this late in the year.
But they have endured and overcome everything that’s been thrown at them and now they are one win away from raising a championship banner.
The Wolverines clinched at least a share of the WJFL Independence Division title with a 19-7 win in their showdown with Penns Grove. They can win it outright Friday by winning a very winnable regular-season finale against Pitman.
“The word that comes to mind is resilient,” Woodstown coach Frank Trautz said. “You got guys go down, guys step up. It really is a team effort. Nobody is afraid to jump into any position and say, hey, I got it for today and we’ll figure it out.
“So resilient is the first word that comes to mind. They have the belief in each other and, listen, when you believe in one another, man, it’s a powerful thing, it really is. That’s what this group has and they’ve shown it all year.”
The adversity and resiliency continued Saturday. The Wolverines (4-3) were already missing lead back Cole Ware (high ankle sprain) and lost quarterback Mason Middlemiss to a head injury right before halftime. Middlemiss came out with the team for the second half carrying his pads and watched the rest of the game from the sidelines.
Luckily, they a 19-0 lead and found a way to grind it out trying to get the end of the game.
The injury to Middlemiss sent the Wolverines to look for other options just to get through the final seconds of the half. While trainers attended to the junior quarterback, running back TyRell West began taking snaps on the sideline because Noah Chiu, who’d usually get that call, limped off the field with an ankle issue just two plays earlier and his status wasn’t certain. Ultimately, they sent in Chiu to take a knee on the final snap of the half and the senior held the reins the entire second half.
“The good thing is Noah has now had to step into this role multiple times over the last few years,” Trautz said. “We have do have close to 100 percent of our playbook available for him. His ankle got rolled up in the first half so his mobility I knew was a question mark. I didn’t know how well he could move, (but) he was moving better than I thought and I think that says a lot about how tough the kid is.”
“I just knew we had to come out here and get stuff done,” Chiu said. “I trusted the guys around me. I know I didn’t look too good that first series, but I was just getting used to things. The pressure was getting to me a little bit, but then we cooled off, I went on defense again and we got stuff done.”
The question remained how the Wolverines would move the ball in the second half. They rode the legs of West and Nehemiah Carter to move the chains and run the clock. West rushed for 66 yards on 12 carries in the second half and finished with 104 yards in the game.
“I just really wanted to step up,” West said. “Our running back went down earlier this year. I had a lot of weight on my shoulders because I was like the second option for us, but I just wanted to prove I could run the ball just as well as him, do what he does, because he’s a really good back and just be consistent for the team.”
The Wolverines scored all three of their touchdowns in a five-minute stretch across the first and second quarters off Penns Grove mistakes.
A punt that didn’t clear the line of scrimmage set the Wolverines up on the 45 with West ultimately opening the scoring on a 3-yard run with 1:12 left in the first quarter. Ten seconds later, Andrew White picked off a pass that bounced off Penns Grove running back Terrell Thomas and returned it 24 yards to make 13-0.
“I’ve never had a pick-six before, so it was a big opportunity for me to go and get the ball and score,” White said. “They rolled out (right) and there were two out and I had to play between both of them. They threw it to the first out and he tipped it up to me, I caught it and ran it back for a touchdown. It was a big touchdown.”
Penns Grove fumbled away the first play of the second quarter at its own 24 and after three runs by Middlemiss and one by West, Carter cashed in with a 5-yard run for a 19-0 lead.
The Red Devils had to overcome a major injury to a key player and the learning curve of a new quarterback to keep themselves in the game. Early in the game they lost two-way lineman JaKai Ingram to a knee injury. His loss was particularly felt on the offensive side, forcing them to run to the opposite side of the field.
With junior quarterback Damien Robinson unavailable, the Red Devils turned the offense over to freshman Avery Batts, meaning their two main weapons were first-year players. Batts had his moments, but the experience was still a bit overwhelming for a player making his first varsity start. Jaivon Thomas, meanwhile, was his typical workhorse self.
Thomas rushed for 133 yards and threw a 32-yard touchdown pass to Jerry Wooton for the Red Devils’ only score.
Thomas was taking the direct snaps in the two drives in the fourth quarter when the Red Devils were trying to make it a one-score game. They ran 14 straight plays from the 50 in on the two possessions, but the Woodstown defense and some ill-timed major penalties turned them away with nothing both times.
“The defense just had the attitude we gave them one they’re not getting another one,” Trautz said.
“We knew what we had to do coming in at halftime, we knew what they were going to try to do and we just didn’t let it happen,” Chiu said. “We shut stuff down in the second half and that’s the reason we won this football game.”
Even though it lost the game, Penns Grove still isn’t out of the division race. The Red Devils (4-3), winless a year ago, can claim a share of the division with a win over Clayton Saturday and a Woodstown loss.
“That’s what I told the kids before the game,” Red Devils coach Damian Ware said. “I said you were predicted to finish last in the division, everybody had us picked sixth ,and right now you’re playing for a championship today. I wanted them to really understand how far we’ve come as a program.
“I also told them we started off with four wins, now we’ve got three losses, how do you handle that? Do you turn it or do you let it put you down into that miserable feeling again or do you use it as motivation to get to that winning side. I really feel like these guys are going to be really good. They want to be really good.
“If we’d have won this game today and had a share of the division title, that’d been great. Obviously we wanted to do that. But it’s not about today, it’s not about right now, it’s about how we build the program to get it back to a consistent program where we’re consistently playing for championships. It’s not about one season, we want to be consistent in the long term.”
Woodstown 19, Penns Grove 7
| WOOD | PG | |
| 12 | 1st Downs | 10 |
| 43-133 | Rushing | 29-147 |
| 2-5-1 | Passes | 9-18-1 |
| 18 | Passing | 114 |
| 3-3 | Fum-Lost | 3-3 |
| 2-32.5 | Punts-Avg | 1-(-6.0) |
| 7-60 | Penalties | 18-144 |
| Woodstown | 13 | 6 | 0 | 0- | 19 |
| Penns Grove | 0 | 0 | 7 | 0- | 7 |
SCORING SUMMARY
W-TyRell West 3 run (run failed), 1:12 1Q
W-Andrew White 24 interception return (Jack Bucksar kick), 1:02 1Q
W-Nehemiah Carter 5 run (pass failed), 9:29 2Q
PG-Jerry Wooton 32 pass from Jaivon Thomas (Brayden Lattig kick), 8:45 3Q
Salem surges in second half
SALEM – Kemp Carr liked what he saw in his streaking Salem football team in the second half Saturday.
The Rams went into the halftime lockers after playing a workmanlike first half, then came out in the second and played with a sense Kemp hadn’t seen, but was hoping to at some point since they’ve restored the roster.
They scored 30 points in the second half, gave up a special teams touchdown and stormed past Burlington City 44-14 for their fourth win in a row.
“I feel like the second half we were a whole different team,” Carr said. “In the second half I feel like that’s our identity to who we want to be all the time, for four quarters, and we need to get to that.
“We played with urgency. We played like the game was 0-0 and we had to go out and handle our business in 24 minutes. I just felt they had a little bit more pop to them, a little more resilient, a little more fire. That’s who I want us to be. I want us to make sure that teams are playing behind schedule and not on schedule. We did that a lot easier in the second half than the first half.”
The Rams took a 14-6 lead into the break on the first of Cashmir Parsley’s three touchdowns and Ahmad Tucker’s 85-yard punt return.
“I won’t say we were flat (in the first half),” Carr said. “I just don’t think we were under urgency. We still we playing good football. We came out revved up. The second play of the game we had probably the biggest hit of the whole game, but I thought we got into too much communicating with them versus communicating with your players. Once we stopped that you actually saw that train starting to move.”
In the second half, Parsley scored twice more, Desmund Thomas threw a 47-yard touchdown pass to Kyvion Parsons and Adrian Alleyne bolted 76 yards for a score. Formal statistics were not immediately available, but both Parsley and starter Alleyne are said to have rushed for over 100 yards.
Both of Burlington City’s touchdowns came on kickoff returns by Corey Boykin.
Salem 44, Burlington City 14
| Burlington City | 0 | 6 | 0 | 8- | 14 |
| Salem | 6 | 8 | 14 | 16- | 44 |
SCORING SUMMARY
S-Cashmir Parsley 5 run (PAT failed)
S-Ahmad Tucker 85 punt return (conversion good)
BC-Corey Boykin 80 kick return (PAT failed)
S-Kyvion Parsons 47 pass from Desmund Thomas (PAT failed)
S-Cashmir Parsley 19 run (conversion good)
S-Adrian Alleyne 76 run (conversion good)
P-Corey Boykin 70 kickoff return (conversion good)
S-Cashmir Parsley 16 run (conversion good)