West Orange HS football team defeats East Orange Campus

NEWARK, NJ — The West Orange High School football team defeated East Orange Campus High School, 29-6, Saturday, Oct. 7, at Schools Stadium in Newark.

The WOHS Mountaineers improved to 3-3. The EOCHS Jaguars moved to 1-5.

It’s week 6 and the push for the 2023 New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association’s group state football championships has begun. Teams are jockeying for the coveted 16 spots in the playoffs for all seven groups statewide in all five major conferences and it is making things quite interesting, as some of the usual suspects are looking for the late-season change in luck with their current positioning. For those that don’t have a playoff qualifying record and combined power points, they will qualify for the NJSIAA regional invitational tournament. One of the more interesting races and must win-out situations is in the North Jersey, Group 5 race.  There are a couple of teams that are eyeing the playoffs that will certainly make the RIT a super alternative if they were to go into the tournament this week. Teams like East Orange Campus and West Orange are examples of this situation with the NJSIAA football playoffs qualifying cut-off race.

Currently, West Orange is sitting in the 13th slot in the mad dash for the playoffs. East Orange is sitting in the 12th, with Bayonne, Bridgewater-Raritan, Hackensack and Elizabeth all tenuously hanging on to hopes of getting in the tournament. Win or lose, both teams will have a lock on their destiny this year. With all the hype centering around the “Battle of the Oranges” this year, it was a wonder how these two squads were able to fight for the top spot for the third straight year. Well, the answer is a simple one. Being that Newark Schools Stadium is the temporary home field for East Orange Campus, West Orange made the 15-minute ride down the busy Bloomfield Avenue corridor to face the Jaguars for a 7 p.m. Saturday night lights game that had all the tangible ingredients for either team to cook up a tasty fall treat this past weekend.  

One key ingredient they both needed was rival Barringer losing at least one game between this past weekend and on Turkey Day against East Orange. Since Barringer played a 3 p.m. tilt against Millburn before “The Battle of the Oranges” as part of a doubleheader, both the Jaguars and Mountaineers were on hand to see the sudden-death triple overtime duel between the Millers of Millburn and the Barringer Blue Bears. What they saw was Millburn playing to its strength and beat Barringer, 34-26. Barringer had the clear lead on the Super Football Conference’s Freedom Red Division prior to the loss, but ultimately gave the Mountaineers and Jaguars a final shot at the title. 

The game got off to an explosive start, with the Jaguars taking the opening kickoff and starting from their own 35-yard line. They marched the initial 65 yards in 13 plays, with quarterback Kyree Fisher not wasting any time by firing darts and bullets with a purpose, coupled with a balanced running attack with their big bruising running back, Corey Woolridge, along with wide receivers Shakur Taylor, Akir Morgan, Jermaine Puryear and Alex Hanks. Woolridge closed the opening drive with a 5-yard gut punch to the house for the opening 6-0 lead with 6:05 in the first quarter. But West Orange seemed to have its hands full with an aggressive Jaguars defensive unit as the Mountaineers got to see their new quarterback, Charlie LaMorte, take over the helm after he made his debut against Bayonne in a 29-0 drubbing of the Bees. LaMorte, who transferred in from Don Bosco Prep, gave West Orange a new wrinkle that made people at the “Battle” stop and take notice. The Mountaineers punted after their first possession, which pinned the Jaguars down on their own 1-yard line. Fisher set up shop there, but that would prove to be in the Mountaineers’ best interests, as he fumbled on a costly third-down snap in the back of their end zone and squibbed the ball out of play for a Mountaineer safety with a 1:00 left in the first quarter. The Jaguars were holding onto a very slim lead, with LaMorte trying to load up his offensive weapons in running backs Adonis White, Noah Terry and Rayel Hunter, and receivers David Moore Jr., Terrell Wilfong, I’yan Gainer and Miles Snead. LaMorte and his troops would set up on the East Orange 48-yard line after the ensuing free kick and began to put pen to paper on their next drive to close out the first quarter and start the second. He drove his squad to the promised land in eight plays, making it look like they were answering the first set of questions on a pop quiz look easy. With the help of White, who wiggled loose for an 18-yard stumbling crab crawl touchdown to give the Mountaineers a 9-6 edge with 8:48 left in the half. East Orange would have to punt its next possession, giving the Mountaineers another crack at extending the lead. And that was what they exactly did, expediently going 90 yards in six plays that included a 50-yard jaunt by Hunter that set up the 1-yard sneaky score by LaMorte to put West Orange up 16-6 with 3:40 remaining in the first half. 

Once again, East Orange was on the move with time not on its side, starting at its own 35-yard line with just 3:40 left. Fisher completed three out six passes in this possession to both Taylor and Morgan to get within scoring distance, but was forced to turn the ball over on downs at the Mountaineers 22-yard line. But the Jaguars defense, also led by Taylor, found a way to come up with its seventh interception on the season. Taylor, who did the honors in snagging this one, returned the ball inside the West Orange red zone to the 18-yard line, giving his offense a quick stab at scoring, before the close of the half. But with Woolridge’s 9-yard run and scoring completely slipping out of its hands, East Orange would go into the half trailing by 10 points.

West Orange turned on its strides, playing to its strengths in the second half. East Orange never found any answers to its sudden adjustments in all three phases of the game. Starting from their own 42-yard line after taking the deferred kickoff in to open the second half, LaMorte guided the Mountaineers 58 yards in five plays, with the aid of a 15-yard personal foul against East Orange, capping the drive with a 13-yard tight-window scoring strike to his big WR Wilfong, who finger-tipped the catch after the ball was batted around and deflected by both sides, to stretch the lead to 23-6 with 9:25 left in the third quarter. 

The Jaguars once again made a scoring threat, but the Mountaineers found ways to jump the Jaguars passing lanes, snagging two interceptions out of nine possible grabs and sacking Fisher twice for big losses, pushing them out of scoring range late in the quarter and forcing a  punt. Halfway through the third quarter, the Jaguars pinned the Mountaineers at their own 5- yard line, searching for a much-needed defensive stop and score. But LaMorte and company proved that they were able to gobble up big yards with the help of White, Wilfong and Terry. LaMorte also broke for a quick first down as well, before delivering a long ball bomb to Wilfong for a 56-yard galloping score to put the cherry on the already iced out SFC–Freedom Red Division co-championship with 4:19 still remaining in the third quarter (West Orange finished at 2-0 in the division, while Barringer is 1-0 and has remaining divisional games against Bloomfield on Friday, Oct. 13, and East Orange Campus on Thanksgiving, with a chance to share the divisional title with West Orange).

East Orange made a valiant effort late in the second half to make a score, but key pass incompletions, interceptions and a pass blocked, along with a couple of sacks, would put the Jaguars at a deficit too big to dig out of, as they largely built their reputation on this season as a dangerous second-half squad that can hit from anywhere on the field. But the Mountaineers defensive unit, as whole, kept bending, but not breaking, coming up big in the fourth quarter to cage the Jaguars from completely exploding on them. 

By the numbers, both quarterbacks had a great night. LaMorte finished 11-for-18 passing for 176 yards, two TDs and one interception. Fisher finished 14-for-22 passing with 196 yards and two interceptions. He was sacked twice, while rushing the ball nine times for 82 yards. “We didn’t play like we wanted,” said East Orange head coach John Jacob to his team after the game. “Hey, I’m proud that you fought to the very end without giving up.” He went on to say that it was a hard-fought game, but West Orange wanted it more than they did this year. All they have to do is go back and prepare for the next game. 

West Orange head coach Darnell Grant happily said, “We knew this was going to be a fight coming in. But never did I expect to see the outcome this way.” He said that he got to check out some of East Orange’s prior games, including last week’s loss to Montclair in which he was in attendance. “Seeing that they are a very explosive team and have a bunch of young guys like us, we were prepared to make the necessary adjustments. I am so proud of my coaching staff and our players.” This is the first time since the COVID–19 outbreak that West Orange won the division championship outright and controlled its destiny towards the NJSIAA Group 5 playoffs. East Orange had won the last two meetings, dating back to the Jaguars’ undefeated season in 2021. East Orange will have to play two playoff-bound teams in the next two weeks in the hopes of possibly qualifying for the state tournament. East Orange will travel to Passaic Tech this Friday evening, Oct. 13, in Wayne to take on the Dye brothers and the undefeated Bulldogs at the “Dog Pound.” With the division championship solidly in their grasp, the Mountaineers will also play Friday, Oct. 13, and will play host to the Bruins of North Bergen, who will come in with an identical 3-3 record, along with hopes of spoiling the Mountaineers’ playoff endeavors. Both games will kick off at 7 p.m.

  East Orange Campus High School football