West Orange players, in dark uniforms, greet East Orange Campus players at midfield before kickoff.
WEST ORANGE/EAST ORANGE, NJ — The East Orange Campus High School football team lost for the first time this season, falling to West Orange 14-13 on Friday, Oct. 17, at West Orange High School’s Joe Suriano Stadium.
The Jaguars moved to a 6-1 record. West Orange improved to 6-2.
“This week is our new Super Bowl week,” said East Orange Campus head coach John Jacob to his team after they defeated the Paterson Eastside Ghosts 34-28 at Paul Robeson Stadium in East Orange on Saturday, Oct. 11. “We are going to prepare and work harder than we done before! Because we ain’t finished yet! We are not going to stop until we get that state championship!”
The Jaguars and the West Orange Mountaineers have had a pretty storied budding rivalry. In some circles, they don’t consider it a rivalry because of the two schools’ non-competition factor prior to 2009, where East Orange trails West Orange by a game, which includes the last five meetings in which the Super Football Conference–Freedom Red Division championship was decided between them. East Orange was holding the deciding game over West Orange’s heads, defeating them 13-7 in dramatic fashion to take the North Jersey, Section 1, Group 5 state sectional championship last year. This is after West Orange edged them out 7-0 during the regular season last year.
In this year’s edition of the “Battle of the Oranges: East vs West,” West Orange was coming into the game after being battle-tested by Phillipsburg and Shabazz, where both those games were losses by a combined score of 34-27. Shabazz squeaked out a 23-yard field goal in its 10-7 victory over the Mountaineers, while the Phillipsburg Stateliners were able to stage a late fourth-quarter drive to come from behind to seal the 24-20 score, while keeping the Mountaineers from walking out of Phillipsburg with the win.
West Orange was able to easily defeat Barringer, Livingston and Montclair, while Irvington and Passaic Tech both went down in a battle of the heavyweights.
The East Orange and West Orange game was all everyone in the neighborhoods and social media were talking about since the season started. Both teams have players who played youth football together and have at least one or more featured players heading off to play at the Division 1 college level. The game got started with East Orange Campus deferring the kickoff to the second half. West Orange couldn’t wait to get the ball in its hands, as junior quarterback Daniel Lewis led an 11-play, 43-yard march with precision to the East Orange 12-yard line, where he decided to call his own number as he was met behind the line of scrimmage by the Jaguars’ defense, led by senior linebacker Shaler Jackson III, who forced and recovered Lewis’s fumble, giving the Jaguars the ball for the first time in the game with 6:35 left in the first quarter.
The Mountaineers were bringing both the kitchen and locker room sinks, as they forced an early three-and-out. But it was the Jaguars that gave up an early fourth-down fumble that would give the Mountaineers an advantage from the East Orange 7-yard line. West Orange senior running back Farad Green wiggled his way through East Orange’s storming defense to dive into the end zone for the first score of the game from 7 yards out, taking the 7-0 lead with 4:40 left in the first quarter.
But East Orange junior quarterback Zachary Concepcion and his running back-by-committee of junior Jaleel Halsey and Jackson would respond in kind and quickly, thanks to Halsey’s 41-yard jail-break up the Mountaineers’ defensive back yard. The Jags covered 61 yards in seven plays, with Halsey grinding out a tough 1-yard push into the end zone with 0:54 seconds left in the opening quarter. But the point-after kick was blocked, keeping West Orange with a slight 7-6 edge going into the second quarter.
The second quarter saw both teams trade punts until less than six minutes left in the first half. Concepcion and Halsey set up the next score from their own 27-yard line. They combined for 17 yards on the ground, before Concepcion found senior wide receiver Alex Hanks for 11 yards, then dropping a 45-yard bomb in the bucket to Hanks two plays later with 1:47 left in the first half, giving East Orange a 13-7 lead.
But like East Orange in the first quarter, West Orange’s response was just as quick. Lewis found senior wide receiver Ahkir Morgan for a 44-yard gain, with the help of a penalty on East Orange. Lewis proceeded to have Green pound the inside three more times, all on 3-yard spurts, with the final one diving into the end zone to regain the slight 14-13 lead with 0:31 left in the half. Concepcion took a knee to end the half.
The dueling quarterbacks’ passing stats were somewhat near perfect, with Concepcion completing three of his four first-half passes for 69 yards with one touchdown, while Lewis had six completions out of 12 attempts for 96 yards and no touchdowns.
The third quarter started much like the first quarter, where both teams would trade interceptions. Concepcion was looking for senior WR Nymir Johnson, who was double-covered by senior defensive back David Moore Jr. and junior DB Dante Palmer, who came away with the snag at the 10:39 mark on the East Orange 35-yard line. But that would prove fruitless, as the Mountaineers punted away the ball after Lewis was sacked by East Orange senior LB Abdoul Kafando.
The Mountaineers’ defense, led by junior lineman Faheem Issah, found ways to trip up the Jaguars’ offense. But it was Hanks who would make his presence felt on defense on the next Mountaineers’ possession. Lewis was looking for Morgan on a quick slant play, but Hanks quickly stepped in front of the play, taking the ball away from Morgan as he was coming out of his break on the ball.
The game became an all-out defensive struggle with West Orange playing keep away with the ball and East Orange coming with fury in its bellies, as both teams came close to scoring late to put the game out of reach. But they would ultimately trade punts well into the fourth quarter. West Orange came the closest, driving from its 40-yard line with 8:38 left in the game. They decided to eat the clock with timely timeouts, mixed in taking the ball nearly 60 yards in 12 plays. But once again, the East Orange defense came up with a critical stop, forcing Lewis to fumble the ball forward. Jags junior DB Eric Wilkens came up with the ball in the end zone with the game on the line and maintaining its undefeated status.
With 1:14 left in the game, Concepcion hit Johnson for 13 yards, but was unable to connect with him two more times. Coupled with spiking the ball and a fumbled snap, East Orange could not complete the rally, as the Jaguars turned the ball over on downs. West Orange immediately went into victory formation with 0:24 left, making its Homecoming even sweeter and all but locked their playoff position as the second seed overall in the North Jersey, Group 5 playoff race, with one game remaining in the regular season.
“Beware of the vengeance of a patient man,” said Jacob to his team after the heartbreaking loss. He went on to explain that his team left it all on the field and played their hearts out. “They played like they were supposed to have done; we just didn’t play our game. We will take this and use it as fuel; we got Clifton next week and we start preparing immediately,” he concluded.
“This game was a tough one,” said West Orange head coach Darnell Grant. He said that with his schedule, he had graduated 33 seniors from last year’s team, and he has mostly underclassmen and new kids on this year’s squad. “It is a testament to our program that we were able to hold on for this game,” said Grant, who was in agreement when the point of the missed extra point by East Orange was raised. “We were up in the fourth quarter against Phillipsburg when they scored the go-ahead touchdown to win that game and then we just did our thing against Montclair last week,” he confirmed about his team’s performance over the past two weeks. East Orange will remain on the road and head to Clifton Stadium to face the Clifton Mustangs on Friday, Oct. 24, at 7 p.m. West Orange will close out the regular season on the road on Friday, Oct. 24. They will head down Bloomfield Avenue to Foley Field to tangle with the Bengals of Bloomfield High, which is looking to get a higher seed in this year’s playoffs. For more information on how to purchase photos from the game, email: kport1@gmail.com or direct message via www.instagram.com/ksport1.
Photos Courtesy of Kerry E. Porter
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