Bartee accounts for 4 TDs, Schalick scores 28 points in third quarter to win first sectional title in 22 years
| SOUTH JERSEY GROUP ! | CENTRAL JERSEY GROUP 1 |
| SECTIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP | SECTIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP |
| Friday, Nov. 13 | Saturday, Nov. 14, noon |
| Schalick 35, Pennsville 6 | Salem (8-3) at Paulsboro (9-2) |
| NORTH JERSEY SECTION 1 | NORTH JERSEY SECTION 2 |
| Friday, Nov. 13 | Friday, Nov. 13 |
| Newton 40, New Milford 7 | Cedar Grove 27, Hasbrouck Heights 7 |
PITTSGROVE — Schalick coach Kevin Leamy, after taking the full force of the water bucket on a 40-degree night just a few minutes earlier, called it with some colorful embellishment one of the most dominant quarters of football he’s witnessed in his entire life, and he’s been around awhile. It was truly a championship quarter.
After a rather pedestrian first half Friday night that barely gave them the lead, the Cougars erupted for four touchdowns in the third quarter and ran away from Pennsville 35-6 for the South Jersey Group 1 title. It was their first sectional title since going back-to-back in 2003 and 2004, well before any of the current players were born.
Now, the top-seeded Cougars, 12-0 for the first time in school history, will host the winner of Saturday’s Salem-Paulsboro game next Friday in the state semifinals. That winner goes to MetLife Stadium for the state championship to play either Newton or Cedar Grove.
Quarterback Kenny Bartee put the Cougars on his back in the second half and accounted for three touchdowns in the big third quarter; he accounted for four in the game. Gio Alicea put an exclamation point on it with a 30-yard pick six for the final score.
“I don’t have many words,” Leamy said. “I’m just proud of these kids. They worked their butts off to get to this point. They don’t let us down. They keep doing what they’re supposed to do every single week. It makes coaching easy when they respond. Every time you coach they respond the right way.”
The coach couldn’t explain why the third quarter happened, it just did.
“I think they just believe and they don’t give up,” he said. “Nothing changed. We didn’t do anything different in the second half than we did the first half. All we said was we’re going to keep doing what we’re doing and it’s going to work in the second half. It was just having the faith in them and the trust in them to do what they were capable of, which is what they should’ve done in the first half. It was exactly the third quarter that we needed. Once we came out and made that statement the game was over. It was over.”
“This is a really big win that we all wanted to accomplish since we were little,” Bartee said. “This is definitely one of those moments you’re going to remember. Like Uncle Joe said nobody’s gonna remember an 11-1 team, (but) everyone’s going to remember a 12-0 sectional championship team.”
The third quarter started with David Stewart separating Javion Sydnor from the second-half kickoff with a massive hit and DezYon Purnell picking it out of the air and returning it to the Pennsville 32.
“It changed the whole entire momentum,” Stewart said. “I feel like I have kind of a tendency of doing that against Pennsville. Like the 94-yard pick-six that changed the (regular-season) game. It gave us a lot of motivation and it just carried the offense through.”
Then Bartee went to work. He threw a 14-yard touchdown pass to Ayden Jenkins and had touchdown runs of 17 and 7 yards 83 seconds apart. Alicea’s pick-six came 14 seconds after the 7-yard TD run. It was his second interception of the quarter.
“They told me I haven’t had one since Week 3, so he threw the ball up, I had to go get it myself,” Alicea said. “We kept the game close and we didn’t like that so in the second half we changed it up, came out and dominated.”
Bartee rushed for 122 yards on 19 carries, giving him 1,610 yards for the season, 230 yards behind Paul Gause’ school record with potentially two games remaining.
Pennsville quarterback Jake Layfield passed for 187 yards and finished with 2457 passing yards for the season, second on the Eagles’ single-season passing list. Receiver Chase Johnson caught four balls for 74 yards to become their first 1,000-yard receiver since 2011.
Layfield, who wore his dad’s fireman’s coat to stay warm on the sidelines between series, moved past Dylan Cummings on the single-season passing list with his 30-yard touchdown pass to Lucas Thomas to open the scoring; Cummings still holds the single-season record (3,078 in 2011). Johnson reached his milestone on his third catch late in the second quarter.
The Eagles scored their touchdown shortly after Schalick fumbled away the game’s opening possession. Layfield hit Sydnor on a 25-yard pass to escape a third-and-28 hole and then found Thomas wide open in the middle of the field on fourth down for the score. The extra point was blocked to leave it 6-0.
Shortly after the touchdown the Cougars made a defensive adjustment that helped them the rest of the game. They took out a linebacker and played four safeties in the secondary. Layfield noticed.
Meanwhile, it took the Cougars all the way to the end of the half to get the lead. Bartee scored on a 23-yard run with 3:01 left in the half and Shawn Kelly kicked the extra point into the cornfield to make it 7-6. The drive got a big boost early when the Eagles were flagged for running into the punter. The penalty gave the Cougars another chance to move the chains, which Bartee did with a seven-yard run.
Later in the quarter Bartee had a 61-yard touchdown pass to Kelly called back for a hold and the half with the Cougars clinging to a 7-6 lead.
“This first half was kind of iffy, we kind of had our worst half of the year, but at the end of the day we trusted ourselves, we trusted our coaches and we trusted everything that we could bring,” Bartee said.
Schalick was playing in the sectional championship for the fourth year in a row, but it was the first one against somebody not named Glassboro.
“Last year we had a chance to bring it home and couldn’t, so this year the feeling is redemption,” Alicea said. “We came back. We got it done.”
| PENNSVILLE | SCHALICK | |
| 7 | First Downs | 14 |
| 14-25 | Rushing | 35-216 |
| 13-26-2 | Passes | 2-6-1 |
| 184 | Passing | 22 |
| 2-1 | Fumbles-Lost | 1-1 |
| 3-44.3 | Punts-Avg. | 2-65 |
| 10-85 | Penalties | 4-45 |
| Pennsville (6-6) | 6 | 0 | 0 | 0- | 6 |
| Schalick (12-0) | 0 | 7 | 28 | 0- | 35 |
SCORING SUMMARY
P – Luke Thomas 30 pass from Jake Layfield (kick blocked), 7:44 1Q
S – Kenny Bartee 23 run (Shawn Kelly kick), 3:01 2Q
S – Ayden Jenkins 14 pass from Kenny Bartee (Shawn Kelly kick), 7:44 3Q
S – Kenny Bartee 17 run (Shawn Kelly kick), 3:22 3Q
S – Kenny Bartee 7 run (Shawn Kelly kick), 1:59 3Q
S – Gio Alicea 30 interception return (Shawn Kelly kick), 1:45 3Q
Photos credits Heather Papiano and Lucky Shots Pix