History was made today when St. Joseph High School of Metuchen traveled up to Sparta to take on Sussex County Vo-Tech. After two years of play on lower levels, their varsity team finally took the field. Sussex County Vo-Tech had a football team about a decade ago, disbanded it and brought it back 3 seasons ago. They have been struggling to get off the ground as they have only one win (via forfeit) in the past 3 seasons. It was a new start for them too so whoever won this game would have encouraging signs to look at for the rest of the season.
From the first snap, it looked like it was going to be St. Joseph's game to lose. They played stellar defense outside of a couple long pass plays and one sustained drive which led to a Sussex County Vo-Tech score spanned across two quarters. I found St. Joseph's play to be very technical. In a way, you could kind of see that it was their inaugural varsity game. They ran 22 plays from scrimmage, all of which were rushes. They only had a total of 144 yards as well. They were in a bind during the game because they quickly built up a 35-0 lead early in the 2nd quarter. St. Joseph's projected starter at the beginning of the season, junior Chris Blades suffered a season-ending injury and their second string quarterback decided to concentrate on baseball. So this game would have been the perfect time to see what kind of skills junior quarterback Ryan Campbell had to offer, but again St. Joseph's was up 35-0 early in the 2nd quarter and you do not want to rub their nose in it. St. Joseph's rested their starters as well pretty much from the 2nd quarter on.
Offensively, I thought St. Joseph's has a lot of potential. Jordan Jimerson had a great game and scored the first touchdown in St. Joseph's history when he returned a punt for a touchdown 2:39 into the game. He ran for a 36 yard touchdown just over a minute later. It helped that 3 of the St. Joseph scoring drives started at the Sussex Tech 26, 45 and 22 yard lines and that boosted their scoring in a hurry. On defense, the teams they play will only get better but I thought this was a start. Outside of the scoring drive for Sussex Tech, I thought St. Joseph played pretty good defense. They got pressure on the quarterback, did a nice job stopping run plays, and played good defense on the receivers. There were a couple pass plays however, that a good team would make, that was incomplete for Sussex Tech, so they have to be careful on plays like that, but other than that, I thought this game was encouraging and there was some good things to come out of it.
After the game, I was talking with St. Joseph's Athletic Director Jerry Smith and he was pretty happy with the team's play. He mentioned the lack of starters for pretty much the final three quarters and thought if we could play like we did in the first quarter, we could have a great season. He told me, "Marlboro next week will be a lot better than this team, but the team 2 weeks from now is like the Jets. If we beat them, I think we go undefeated." I think undefeated is a lot to ask for but there's no reason St. Joseph cannot finish over .500. I think the unfamiliarity factor against Cushing Academy in Massachusetts will help them two weeks from now, not to mention it is St. Joe's first home game in history and they are doing a lot to celebrate the day. I think they will come ready to play. Marlboro lost this past weekend by more than three scores to J.P. Stevens of North Edison. J.P. Stevens did not win a game last year so that is encouraging to hear. Marlboro is a Group IV school, so that is a big step up from Group I and Sussex County Tech so it is a good early season challenge for St. Joe's and it will be interesting to see if they come as ready to play this coming Saturday as they did for their inaugural football game.
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