By Tim Kelly
Although Ocean City came out on the short end of the 38-6 score to St. Augustine Prep on Friday night, the Red Raiders acquitted themselves much better than the final scoreboard math would indicate.
“I was proud of the effort,” Coach Kevin Smith said. “Our guys played hard and that is the first prerequisite of a winning football team.”
Indeed, the Raiders, whose overall record dropped to 3-1, mixed it up all night with the much larger Hermits in a non-league game at Carey Stadium. They moved the ball up and down the field most of the night, but were unable to come away with points when they needed to answer the explosive Hermits.
“We had the ball inside their 35 four or five times, but just couldn’t finish, and you can’t afford to do that against a good team like St. Augustine and expect to win,” Smith said.
The tone seemed to be set on the first play when Jaylen DeCoteau took the opening kickoff and sprinted 50 yards down the left sideline to put St. Augustine in business at the Ocean City 16. Two plays later, they were in the end zone on a Nasir Hill 11-yard run up the middle, and Luke Snyder added the PAT.
On its first possession, Ocean City marched 53 yards on 15 methodical plays, highlighted by Ian Aungst’s 12-yard hookup with Billy Kroeger to move the chains and advance the ball to the Hermit 12. They got as close as the 7, where the drive ended on downs.
Another Red Raider drive stalled at the St. Augustine 24 later in the quarter, and on the first play of the second quarter, the Hermits made it 14-0 on a 73-yard pass play from Chris Allen to DeCoteau.
Ocean City closed the gap to 14-6 on another long drive covering 75 yards on eight plays. Aungst connected with Kroeger for 17 yards, Brian Beckmann for 9, and Jake Schneider for 14 along the way.
The drive was capped on a 26-yard fade to Brandon Lashley, who made a sensational catch on a jump ball between two defenders. Lashley absorbed a hard hit on the play and lay on the ground for several long minutes and was attended to by the OC training staff before getting up and returning to action.
But that was as close as Ocean City would get.
The biggest play of the game came shortly thereafter on a blocked Lashley punt by Joe Bonczek, the Hermits’ standout senior middle linebacker who is already committed to play at Princeton University. That gave St. Augustine the ball at the Ocean City 36, and on the next play Hill broke loose and ran it in for a 36-yard rushing score. The point after made it 21-6.
Once again, Ocean City fought back with another long drive. After taking over at their own 31, Aungst worked the middle of the field on underneath routes, including a 13-yarder to Schneider on a third-and three. The drive was aided by a roughing the kicker penalty and the Raiders made it down to the 17, where a fourth down pass intended for Louis Conte was batted away to end the threat.
As a result, instead of closing the gap to 21-13, the Red Raiders went into halftime down 21-6. Once again, the lack of a running game hurt Ocean City. The Raiders were held to 25 yards on the ground in the first half.
The crushing blow came midway through the third. Hill again broke loose for a long run, galloping 36 yards. Lashley saved a TD with a great shoestring tackle, bringing the speedy Hill down at the 1-yard line.
Ocean City fought back with a great goal-line stand, dropping Hill for a loss and then for no gain on a great tackle by Kevin King, followed by another Hill no-gainer.
On fourth-and-goal from the one, Hill was apparently stacked up, and after several long seconds passed with no whistle, Nasir managed to break across for the TD, to make it 28-8 with the PAT.
Hill caught a 15-yard pass from Allen with 1:28 left in the third and the Hermits closed out the scoring with a completely unnecessary 24-yard Snyder field goal.
“We had nothing to lose (in terms of the West Jersey League Independence Division race) in this game,” Smith said, whose team is still 3-0 in the league and has a bye to rest up before traveling to Camden County on Oct. 12 for another non-league matchup, this one against Triton.
“We’re a little banged up but we’ll be OK. I’m really proud of the way our guys fought tonight.”
