By DAVE O’SULLIVAN
Staff Writer
On X @GDsullysays
HAMMONTON — Championship-caliber teams don’t sit around complaining all week after a tough loss. They get right back to work. And double their efforts so coming up short doesn’t happen again.
Mainland Regional — a team that has played in two straight state championship games — got kicked in the teeth by Atlantic City in the season opener last week at the Mid-Atlantic Pigskin Classic in Wilmington, Del., falling 25-8 to the Vikings. The Mustangs allowed four touchdowns and gave up 425 passing yards and another 75 on the ground against Atlantic City.
But instead of boo-hooing, the Stangs wiped the blood from their mouths, spit out some of their Chicklets and came out fighting this week — much to the dismay of host Hammonton, which was coming off a convincing win over Franklin in its season opener.
Mainland struggled with penalties early on, committing errors on four of its first five plays, but after that first series the boys in Kelly green looked a lot more like their old selves.
The Stangs ripped off 28 points in the second quarter — including three straight touchdowns by senior receiver Jake Blum, who missed the entire baseball season after having hernia surgery. That ballooned a 7-0 lead into a 35-0 advantage by halftime, and the entire second half was played under a running clock.
Final score in our Bunting Family Pharmacy Marquee Matchup: 42-7.
The Stangs (1-1, 0-0 West Jersey Football League American) got a little bit of their swagger back — and they’ll need it, with a brutal stretch coming up against Millville, Cherokee, St. Augustine Prep and Ocean City.
“It just felt great to get back into the win column. We had a rough week last week, but we knew what we had to do coming out here and we executed on every play,” said senior wideout Liam Kennedy, who scored the first and last touchdowns of the first half on 12-yard and 4-yard passes from senior quarterback John Franchini. “We had a great game. We knew we didn’t play our best (against Atlantic City), and coming into this week we knew we had to be better on both sides of the ball. Coming to practice every day, we worked hard, and everyone coming together helped bring this team a lot closer and helped us get back on track.”
“I’ve been counting down the days,” said Blum, whose last athletic competition prior to last week’s season opener was last year’s state championship loss against Old Tappan in December. “Everybody says don’t count the days of your senior year too fast, but I was just waiting to get back on the field. Once the doctors gave me the OK to go, I was like, ‘let’s do this!’ Everyone saw that last week we came out a little flat. That was a tough game, but it’s all about how you bounce back. I feel great, I was ready to come out and put it all out on the field for my guys.”
Blum changed the game in the second quarter, as he picked off a pass and returned it 33 yards to the end zone to push Mainland’s lead to 14-0. Then, after Hammonton (1-1, 0-0 WJFL Constitution) fumbled a punt snap, Blum struck again, scoring from three yards out as a wildcat quarterback. That made it 21-0 with 5:46 to go before halftime, and on the Blue Devils’ next possession Mainland senior Luke Kerrigan blocked a punt that was recovered by fellow senior Brady Kallen. That set the Stangs up at Hammonton’s 10-yard line, and a few plays later Franchini rolled left and found Blum for a 5-yard touchdown pass that pushed the lead to 28-0.
“Jake is Jake. He can do anything on the field and it’s awesome to have a player like him. I love the kid, he’s a great kid,” Kennedy said.
Mainland’s defense was able to shut down Hammonton sophomore running back Joseph Scott, who had a breakout 250-yard game in the season opener. He finished with 102 yards and a touchdown on 19 carries, but most of those yards came after Mainland pulled its first-team defense.
“We switched around our front (on defense) a little bit. We knew what we had to do; we knew (Scott) had a big game last week, so we were ready for him, and we were ready for the pass when they needed to,” Kennedy said. “We knew we had to bottle up No. 5. That was our game plan all week.”
Kennedy and Blum said it’s going to take a little bit of time to fill in some of the holes left by graduation from last year’s sectional championship team, but this week’s win over Hammonton will go a long way toward building the confidence of some of the newer players.
“It’s going to take a couple of games, but I think after this game we’re on the right track to get to that point,” Kennedy said. “I think these next couple of weeks, they’re obviously going to be difficult because we play a bunch of good teams, but I think our guys who are stepping into roles here have a great attitude. Our younger guys, the coaches told them all week that it’s just a game, go have fun, just like in youth league. They all know the standard that we set here, and they’re all living up to that standard.”
“I think Atlantic City was a great opponent for us to open up against, not only because of the rivalry factor, but also because they have the spread offense and the athleticism like we’re going to see against Millville, Winslow, schools like that. It was a great team for us to open up against, but obviously it didn’t go the way we wanted it to. But I feel like just getting that first game under our belts was a huge opportunity for us. We came back this week, knew what we had to work on. We always say we want to get 11 hats to the ball, so all week we worked on that and making tackles in space. I was so impressed with our defense tonight. In the first half I think they only had one first down. That was our goal coming into this game — everybody was thinking, ‘oh, Mainland’s not that good, let’s go put it on them.’ But we came out and we showed them. Now the state is on alert and other teams have to hunker down against us,” Blum added. “I think it was just getting a full game under our belts. We have guys who have never played a full game before or didn’t have a lot of varsity reps, so it was about getting them the reps and getting them to come out here and play with confidence tonight. We watched a lot of film this week and worked really hard in practice. That result last week — all the guys will tell you — we felt embarrassed coming off the field and we didn’t want that feeling again. We had to come out here and prove something.”
WHAT’S NEXT: Mainland Regional hosts Millville on Sept. 12 at 6 p.m. Hammonton travels to Holy Spirit on Sept. 12 at 6 p.m.
