October
22, 2006
NEW MILFORD -- Will Walsh is very comfortable on the baseball field. In fact, so comfortable that he did not play football in his first two high school years. The New Milford junior was persuaded to play this year, and the Knights are glad he did.
On Saturday night, he went yard against Park Ridge, returning an interception for a 95-yard touchdown that completely swung the game around and was the centerpiece play of a 20-12 Knights victory.
The win keeps their slim playoff hopes alive and gets them back to .500 at 3-3, while the Owls dropped their fifth straight game to fall to 1-5 on the season.
“We’ve got a chance,” NM head coach Billy Wilde said. “We can only control ourselves and what we do, but at least we’ll go to practice this week with the playoffs still a possibility. That’s a great felling.”
They can give a big thanks to Walsh, who Wilde chased for two years to get him out for football. His big return changed the entire complexion of the game, that and a penalty that cost the Owls a shot at a tie.
Park Ridge QB Colby McGarrity had scored on a 7-yard option run that would have put his team an extra point away from evening the game, but the TD was nullified by a holding penalty.
An incomplete pass and a pair of sacks (Kevin Hill got the first one and Rocco Favorito and Jose Correa shared the second one) left the Owls with a fourth down at the Knight 19-yard line.
McGarrity went for the flag at the left pylon, but Walsh went up and snared the ball between three players. He went down the left sideline and outran the Park Ridge pursuit.
“We were in man coverage. I saw the ball in the air, and I went after it,” Walsh recalled. “I knew I wasn’t going to be caught as soon as it hit my hands.”
“He can hit all the home runs he wants (on the baseball field),” Wilde said, “but he’ll remember that the rest of his life.”
“We get the holding penalty, they return (the interception), and that killed us,” PR head coach Gary Mioli said.
The Owls did get the score back, as McGarrity went 5 of 5 passing for 55 yards, with the final pass going to Tyler Hespe for an 11-yatd touchdown. They missed the two-point conversion run as Matt Norton stopped Richard Hwang a yard short of the goal line with 4:05 remaining.
The Knights then got a key 17-yard run by A.J. Scoppa for a first down that, with PR owning only one time out, allowed them to milk the clock all the way down to 19 seconds, all but nullifying any chance for a last-second Park Ridge miracle.
Scoppa also made a huge run in the second quarter after the Owls took a 6-0 lead on a Hwang 7-yard touchdown run. Backed up to the 17-yard line after the kickoff, Scoppa got a handoff and found a crease to the left sideline on the way to an 83-yard TD scamper.
“It felt good,” Scoppa said. “It was a 46 down, and the hole was right there. It left me one-on-one with the (defensive back), and that was it.”
“We had them pinned down, and I’m thinking, OK, it’s 6-0, hold them here, and he goes on the first play,” Mioli lamented.
“He bangs it up in there pretty good, but if you miss a tackle, he’s gone,” Wilde said. “He’s electric, he’s got that second step, he’s as good as they come and he’s only a sophomore.”
That was a big part of Scoppa’s workhorse 29-carry, 209-yard effort, and he was quick to credit the offensive line, which has senior Korrey Sanjek at center, sophomores Daniel Suarez and Mike Piterski at the guards and junior Mike Sullivan and senior John Wheatley at the tackles.
“They did a great job. If it wasn’t for them I wouldn’t have any yards,” Scoppa said of his blockers. “They made me holes and I got through them.”
“They’re coming along, they’re coming off the ball,” Wilde remarked. “Hill and Wheatley are the only starters back, and they’re moving people and doing a great job.”
“For the most part, we did a good job,” Mioli said of his defense, “But he broke the long one and the one late in the game, where if we stop him and get a time out, maybe we can do something.”
Meanwhile, the Owl offense was struggling to pick up any ground yards. Hwang lugged the pigskin 20 times for 51 yards, and PR had only 91 rushing yards on 33 carries.
“We were swarming on the ball wherever it was,” Walsh said. “We always seemed to have a couple of guys there.”
Both teams wasted first half fumble recoveries (by New Milford’s Scott Brunner and Park Ridge’s Chris Entrup), though the Owls got theirs at the Knight 29 and could not get a first down.
“We played to the bitter end,” Mioli said. “We had a big turnover we couldn’t do anything with, and that hurt us. The last two weeks, it’s been 14-7 (loss to Palisades Park/Leonia) and 20-12. It’s going to be a hard week. We’ll have to see how they’re going to respond.”
Scoppa also had the middle New Milford TD, a 1-yard run to complete the opening drive of the third quarter for a 13-6 lead. Norton had 16 tackles and Hill had 10, including two sacks. Correa had 1.5 sacks for New Milford, which had 13 total tackles for losses by its defense.
McGarrity finished 12 of 22 passing for 143 yards, with Makoto Matsuo grabbing 4 for 38 yards and Hespe 3 for 41 yards. Hespe also had 12 tackles, with Matt Moreno adding 11 stops and a sack.
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