October
7, 2006
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| Guy Germinario and Don Bosco Prep led 40-0...after the first quarter. |
RAMSEY -- As the clock ticked down to zero, there it was for all to see on the scoreboard. Don Bosco 40, Montclair 0.
The only problem? It was only the end of the first quarter.
You can hear it all now. There they go again, running up a score. The big, bad Parochial school beating up on the poor old public school. The raging will be starting up again. The calls for the all-Catholic league, get them out of the NNJIL. All of it is bound to happen.
The shame of it will be that it would be ignorance or blind resentment that feeds this round of fire, because, despite what many will think, this is not about Don Bosco running up a score.
For the record, the final score was 68-0, though it means little to anyone other than the record keepers and the stat guys. This is more about the story within the story, the one that will have fan the innuendo and renew the age-old debate.
Before even chronicling the actual events, take a listen to what Montclair head coach Ed Lebida said right after the game.
“I don’t care about that,” he said of the first quarter. “They could have scored 100 points. We gave them a bunch. We need to get better, that’s all there is to it.”
This coming from the losing coach of a team that came in 2-1 and had played a splendid game the week before in dismantling Eastside. This coming from a veteran coach who has seen many a game and certainly a few where the opposing coach may have been guilty of rubbing a nose in it.
If he can stand stoically and profess that the score doesn’t bother him, then why should everyone around him have a bigger problem. Were the Mounties embarrassed? I would tend to think so, but a solid coach like Lebida will turn that embarrassment into a motivational tool to get ready to play Ridgewood next week.
The closest he would come to anything controversial? Try this:
“It’s tough to have them at this point in the schedule, right in the middle. It kind of skews things.”
Harsh words, eh?
You see, the difference between Ed Lebida and the fervent fans and parents who will look from the outside and clamor for even more change is that he gets it. This wasn’t about the Ironmen rubbing it in, it was about his own team’s inability to hold onto the ball.
Take that unbelievable first quarter, which dragged on for 52 minutes. Montclair came out in the shotgun looking to play a wide-open offense, and even completed its first pass for 14 yards.
Still, the Bosco defense forced two punts and got a 3-yard Guy Germinario touchdown run and a 25-yard Brian Hanly field goal to take a 10-0 lead.
At that point, the wheels fell completely off the wagon for Montclair. It began with an interception by Bosco’s Steve Proscia that he returned to the Mountie 18, a play that saw Montclair QB Marlon Calbi get leveled by Dan Marcoux as he started towards Proscia.
Three plays later, Matt Simms hit Orry Michael with a 16-yard touchdown pass and Hanly added one of his seven extra point kicks.
Hanly then drilled the kickoff into the end zone, and after a false start, the snap went over Calbi’s head. It went into the end zone and Calbi kicked it out of the back of the end zone for a safety.
Montclair kicked off, it was returned to the Mountie 41, and Germinario went through a huge hole on the left side and scored almost untouched…26-0 with 2:40 to go in the opening period.
Another kickoff into the end zone (Hanly put 6 of 9 there, and his backup, Patrick Murray, drove both his kickoffs there), and on the first play, another shotgun snap over Calbi’s head that Germinario fell on in the end zone.
“We didn’t want to just abandon the shotgun,” Lebida said. “We made mistakes, but we needed to work on it.”
Kickoff, end zone. First play, fumble forced and recovered by Ike Garrow at the 23. Four plays later, a Tony Jones 1-yard TD run, 40-0 with 14.8 seconds in the first quarter.
The Bosco defensive line was out before the midway point of the second quarter. The Ironmen were throwing the ball, but, remember, this is the second quarter for a team coming off a bye week.
“We had to give them a half,” DB head coach Greg Toal said of his starters. “They’re running a wide open offense, we’re running a wide open offense, the clock’s stopping and it became a tough situation.”
Germinario (4 carries, 72 yards) scored on a 27-yard run and Proscia caught a 21-yard TD pass from Simms, who was 13 of 18 for 220 yards and the two TDs. He went to seven different receivers in the first half before joining the rest of the varsity on the bench after halftime, their pads left behind in the locker room.
Sophomores Brett Knief and Dylan
Jagiello each got their first varsity touchdowns in the third quarter on 12
and 16 yard runs, respectively, and Murray kicked both PATs.
Montclair moved to the Don Bosco 9 before two sacks moved them back, and the
Ironmen ran out the game.
So, was this a product of one team ramrodding another? No, this was a product of one team playing at a very high level and another playing at its worst. It happens, and unfortunately for Montclair, it happened in the wrong game against the wrong team, a Bosco squad that had fared tremendously well against three highly-ranked, out-of-state opponents.
“Playing those games doesn’t hurt you, that’s for sure,” Toal agreed. “It’s a different speed, a different level.”
You won’t hear Lebida griping. Instead, you’ll see him working his team, preparing for the next game, having put this one to bed right from the final whistle. Now, it remains to be seen if everyone else will do the same.
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