EAST ORANGE, NJ — The East Orange Campus High School football team captured the New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association’s North Jersey, Section 1, Group 5, playoff championship with a 35-7 victory over Passaic County Technical Institute on Saturday afternoon, Nov. 20, at Paul Robeson Stadium.
Senior running back Damon Phillips rushed for 205 yards and three touchdowns on 24 carries as the top-seeded Jaguars, under fifth-year head coach and East Orange native Rae Oliver, remained perfect on the season. The victory improved their record to 11-0 this season.
The Jaguars will visit Barringer on Thanksgiving at 10 a.m. at Schools Stadium in Newark and will close out the season when they face Clifton in the North, Group 5, championship game at Rutgers University’s SHI Stadium in Piscataway on Sunday, Dec. 5, at 1 p.m.
“We are 0-0,” said Oliver after last week’s semifinal win over West Orange High School, “I will leave the records to the sports media.” Justifiably so, the sports media community has been keeping a close eye on this history-making feat.
Not since the 1960s has there been an undefeated East Orange football team vying for the state championships. Under the modern NJSIAA football playoff system that was formally developed in 1974, East Orange’s two former high schools, East Orange High School and Clifford J. Scott, both made the playoffs throughout the decades, most notably East Orange going 7-2 in 1983, only to lose to Union in the sectional final; and Clifford Scott in the mid-1990s also losing in the sectional final.
Since East Orange Campus’ first season in 2003, only four coaches have headed up the program. The late Larry Schumacher was the first coach to bring the newly named Jaguars out of the shadows of their predecessors, the East Orange High School Panthers and the Scotties of Clifford J. Scott High School. Former longtime head coach Marion Bell famously took the Jags to the playoffs two years after taking over for Schumacher and kept the Jags in the hunt for the bulk of his tenure, which included a near perfect season in 2007 that earned the Jags their first state sectional title in program history and the first since the East Orange High School Panthers’ 1967, 1968 and 1969 squads. Al-Majid Hutchins kept the tradition going with two seasons of playoff appearances, only to see the team exit in the first round. With Rae Oliver at the helm for the past five seasons, East Orange has been in the hunt every year of his tenure.
Yet there has never been a state high school football championship hosted inside the boundaries of the city of East Orange. East Orange has played host to several youth football championships throughout the decades, but never any high school championships.
The Jags faced a young, scrappy PCTI Bulldogs squad that edged them out of the playoffs two years ago in the North 1, Section 5, semifinals by a score of 14-6. The Bulldogs would eventually lose the sectional title to Ridgewood.
PCTI featured dynamic twins in running backs Trashon and Travon Dye. Both brothers have been catalysts for the third-seeded Bulldogs this season, as they helped pull out a triple-overtime win over sixth-seeded Montclair, 20-14, before gaining redemption over No. 2 seed Ridgewood, 28-9, in last week’s semifinals. PCTI head coach Matt Demarest has guided the Bulldogs to 18 playoff appearances, with six sectional finals and three titles.
Entering the game, the schools have split their playoff meetings. East Orange defeated the Bulldogs in 2009, and PCTI defeated the Jags in 2019. But never had anyone expected to see the show that was given.
From the number of tickets that were pre-purchased online and the crowded parking lots, it was clear that Saturday afternoon would become something almost electric. The nervous energy was palpable: There would be a near perfect season for one team and an upset for another. The Jags stuck to their familiar slow start, after the Bulldogs won the coin toss and deferred the ball to the second half. With members of the 2007, 11-1, team and the 2019, 9-2, squad on hand to witness the first East Orange Jaguar football team to make school history, it didn’t take much for the Jaguars to pounce in the first quarter. The Bulldogs felt they had East Orange senior running back Damon Phillips bottled up, especially when they dropped him for a 2-yard loss to start the game. That only put a target on their backs, as the shifty senior found wide-open greenery, going 68 yards for the first score of the game with just two minutes left in the first quarter.
East Orange struck again when senior quarterback Raeden Oliver, the head coach’s son, capped a seven-play, 66-yard march by finding wide receiver BJ Covington, who went 45 yards on a pass play. That set up Phillips for the 4-yard dive into the house, making the score 14-0. Oliver wasn’t done, as he marched right back after the Jags’ no-holds-barred defense gave him the ball back, stopping the PCT Dye twins on a drive that would have put the Bulldogs within striking distance. Oliver marched the Jags 80 yards, finding Edwin Thomas III for 30 yards, mixing in Phillips, Josh Richards and Covington along the way. He then found a wide-open streaking Ahmad Nalls, a tight end, on a deep post pattern for a 28-yard dagger for the 21-0 lead. Oliver, who already hedged upon 1,600 yards on the season, threw for 126 yards and a score while completing nine of his 11 passes for the day.
The third quarter started with the Bulldogs taking nearly a full quarter to drive 80 yards for a touchdown with sophomore sensation Trayvon Dye dialing up a little trickeration with a 28-yard jump-pass to Kaiden Rex, who slipped behind the East Orange secondary to set up an eventual touchdown by Trayvon Dye from 4 yards out. But that only angered an astute Jaguar defense, led by Kyle Louis, Richards, Nalls, Mounge Nyame, Akeerie McFarland, and Covington. They buckled down and forced PCT to punt and eventually snagged a key interception by Richards from Trayvon Dye. The Jags went back to work, taking the ball 80 yards again as Oliver pulled the ball on a double-fake and disappeared behind is “killer whales” led by senior offensive lineman Dieunerst Collins, only to magically reappear in the end zone 6 yards later, making the score 28-7 after Geraldo Gibson completed his fourth of his five extra-point kicks. Gibson kicked two touchbacks, punted the ball four times and flipped the field when the Bulldogs were looking for a statement in each of the four quarters.
East Orange closed out the scoring as Phillips put the exclamation point on the game when he found the end zone one more time with a 1-yard gut punch that made everything they worked so hard for worth it for the final 35-7 score.
“We have a great team,” said PCT head coach Matt Demarest, “but we just ran into a better team. I send a heartfelt congratulations to East Orange Campus.” Understandably so, players from Passaic County Technical Institute were quite emotionally disappointed, with one parent consoling two players, stating that, “This is a part of life. You will have to learn from this and grow from it, a lesson you will never forget.”
“We did something that no other team from East Orange had ever done,” started East Orange Head Coach Rae Oliver among the cheers of almost the entire East Orange football community, “We started on a mission, which is not complete. We have two more to go. But I will say this: You all make us a team. By you focusing on the goals at hand, in the classroom, on the field, and in the community, you are the pride that represents East Orange Campus High School!”
The alumni on hand from the old East Orange High School and Clifford J. Scott High School paid well wishes and congratulatory hugs to each of the players and coaches. “We are brothers, and as brothers we had to learn to stick together, despite some of us going our different ways,” said Kyle Louis, who will be attending the University of Pittsburgh in the fall of 2022. He went on to say that his leadership style is through his actions and not just by his words. He gave credit to his more vocal teammates, such as Raeden Oliver and Damon Phillips. Phillips expressed the need to score on the 68-yard touchdown, stating, “I wasn’t to go down and not score. I had to get there.”
For some of the coaching staff members, it was a way to give back, but it also served a personal purpose. The overwhelming majority needed something to help their personal walk in life. Football gave that to them, so much so that it sparked a discussion on what it means to be a champion. The answers were wide-ranging. To the wide receivers, it felt like business-as-usual. To Raeden Oliver, the quarterback, it was about setting and meeting expectations, while his mother, Dionne Oliver, Rae’s Oliver’s wife, showed happiness and pride while being completely speechless. Tears of joy found their way to many faces, as the traditional postgame tailgate kicked off in the parking lot of Robeson Stadium.
East Orange Campus will be in action on Thursday, Nov. 25, Thanksgiving Day, as they will take the short ride to Newark Schools Stadium to face the Barringer Blue Bears and new head coach Dave McCombs. The game is set to kick off at 10 a.m and will set the tone for the regional championship on Sunday, Dec. 5, at Rutgers SHI Stadium in Piscataway. “I’ve stated many times that they will have to come through the gates on North Clinton Street,” joked Oliver, “but now I guess we will have to take this show on the road.” East Orange Campus completed a four-game home stand that is impressive in its own right; the Jaguars allowed only 14 points the whole stretch, outscoring their opponents by an average of 26.25 points per game. Amazing as it sounds, the North Jersey Section 2, Group 5, champions, Clifton Mustangs, will have a little retribution to seek, since East Orange shut them out 36-0 during the COVID-19 season last year.
With the stage set, the undefeated Jaguars can look to check off the second of four big goals on their to do list. The first was to win the Super Football Conference–Freedom Red Division championship for the third time in four years. The second was to win the NJSIAA Rothmann Orthopedics North Jersey Section 1, Group 5, championship on their home turf. Now the other two will be beating Barringer in the oldest rivalry in high school football history and winning the final NJSIAA Rothmann Orthopedics regional bowl. Starting in fall 2022, the state high school football community will play down to a state group champion. East Orange Campus will be one of four schools representing Essex County in the regional tournament. The other schools will be the Panthers of Cedar Grove in Group 1, the Chiefs of Caldwell High School in Group 2, and the Blue Knights of Irvington High School in Group 4, all of whom captured their respective sectional group championships on Friday evening. For more information on these games and locations go to njsiaa.org or gridironnewjersey.com.
Photos Courtesy of Kerry E. Porter
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