By DAVE O’SULLIVAN
Staff Writer
On X @GDsullysays
HADDONFIELD — Brody Leonard is 6-feet tall and 180 pounds. Not huge by running back standards, but the kid is built like his bones are made of rebar. It looks like you could whack him in the stomach with a baseball bat and he’d just grin at you and ask for more.
Leonard’s sturdiness was tested here on Friday night as coach Frank DeLano and the rest of his Bulldogs teammates leaned hard on the senior to get them through to the South Jersey Group 2 championship game.
Leonard carried the ball 35 times for 234 yards and three touchdowns to lead Haddonfield to a 28-13 victory over upstart Lower Cape May. The top-seeded Dawgs will host No. 3 Delran, an upset winner over No. 2 West Deptford, in next Friday’s sectional championship. Haddonfield is now just three wins away from a state championship.
Was handing the ball to No. 25 nearly three dozen times the plan? DeLano said no, he’d prefer to be more balanced, but sometimes you just have to go with your gut and trust your senior to get the job done. At one point in the third quarter, Leonard carried the ball eight straight times, capping the drive with a 13-yard jaunt into the end zone that put Haddonfield up 21-7. That eventually was the back breaker for the Caper Tigers.
“It is a feel. I don’t think we’ve ever given a kid the ball 35 times in a game. We’re usually a balanced offense, but he was feeling it,” DeLano explained. “And credit our offensive line. They were packing eight-man boxes, nine-man boxes — they were bringing everybody in and playing man-to-man on the outside. They were saying they were going to try to stop (the run), but fortunately we executed.”
“I don’t have any say in (the number of carries I get). We practice the plays we ran, daily, and it’s just repetition for us,” Leonard said. “I wouldn’t have my success tonight without my offensive line. I give all my praise to them because they do a really good job. They are very disciplined and they fight hard for each other, which I love.”
Added senior tight end Jack McKeever, “when he’s running and I’m blocking, it’s awesome to look up after blocking and see that he’s eight or nine yards downfield every time. We have this running joke that every time he runs — because he runs hard — I say, ‘that’s a grown man right there.’ He said during Thursday’s walk-through, ‘I better hear ‘grown man’ every time (you help me up).’ Three tuddies (touchdowns) and 234 yards? That right there is a grown man, what can I say?”
Lower Cape May (8-3, 5-0 West Jersey Football League Liberty) made it a game early in the fourth quarter as junior quarterback David Douglas connected with senior wideout Jonathan Fernandez on a huge gainer that set up Ryan Mallon’s 2-yard touchdown run that shaved the lead to 21-13 with 8:13 remaining. But Haddonfield (8-2, 4-1 WJFL Continental) responded as a bunch more Leonard runs set up Mike Keenan’s 6-yard touchdown run. That gave the Dawgs a 28-13 lead with 2:26 remaining, and sophomore defensive back James Farrell recorded his second interception of the game on Lower’s next drive, effectively ending the game.
“We were expecting them to be very physical and we don’t take any team lightly. We had a lot of self-inflicted wounds in the first half, but in the second half we fixed them and the team did a great job coming together and we got the win,” Leonard said. “We just tried to break their spirit. We came together at halftime and said we needed to (dominate) this team up front, and we did. The offensive line did really well, the guys on the outside did great blocking for me and the coaches had some really good play calling. The coaches put us in the right positions to make plays.”
Lower came out on fire, as Mallon’s 79-yard return on the opening kickoff set up his own halfback option touchdown pass to Fernandez that put the Tigers up, 7-0, less than two minutes into the game.
“We were on heels (at the start). Special teams were huge tonight and they got the better of us on that, they really did,” DeLano said. “That’s something we pride ourselves on but credit them, they executed kickoff return really well, and that kept them in the game, quite frankly.”
But Haddonfield responded, tying the game at 7 on Leonard’s first touchdown of the night. From there, the Dawgs’ defense took over, bottling up Douglas and Mallon for much of the night. That duo combined for nearly 2,000 yards and 22 touchdowns coming into the game.
“You can have (a big quarterback and a good running back) but when you go against our defense it’s not always going to work,” McKeever said. “There’s something special about a kid named James Farrell, a sophomore, getting two picks, including the game-sealer. It’s a lot of fun to play with these guys. I think we’re just doing our thing. It’s not what’s going on, it’s just the guys here who are doing it. It’s a lot of really good preparation from our coaches and from there we just execute what we have to do. The coaches set us up and we just have to execute, and we have been.”
Added Leonard, “our defense has always been outstanding. The coaches put in so much time with film. During school days we’ll have defensive meetings during lunch with all our teammates. We do that every Wednesday, and all that hard work is paying off now.”
“A lot of hours went into this game from our defensive staff, planning that thing out. They had two really good tackles and when you put those guys together that’s 600 pounds of human, so we had to find a way. More importantly, we had to execute, and I thought we did that,” DeLano said. “(Their quarterback) is a tough runner, and he can throw it, too. Anytime you can win a playoff game, you’re excited. We don’t take these for granted. I don’t care how many playoff games we’ve been a part of (as a program), our seniors get one shot at this so it doesn’t matter what you’ve done in the past. We just want to make sure we’re doing everything we can to make sure they have a great high school experience.”
The Dawgs live on to fight another day, and even though they’ve had a long history of championship football, coach DeLano said his team will prepare as if they’ve never won a title. Because these seniors haven’t, and they want one, badly.
“You don’t take these for granted, ever. I was sitting in the barber shop a couple weeks ago and the woman who’s been cutting my hair for years says, ‘Frank, are you still nervous after all these years?’ Of course you are because the seniors get one journey,” he said. “So, of course, you’re nervous, and we don’t take this lightly. Next week the championship game will be here and the last time that happened was 2018. We’re excited. This time of year you’re excited because you want to embrace that challenge.”
Added Leonard, “Our class hasn’t had a championship at all, so I think we want it a little bit more. We’re going to do whatever it takes to get us there.”
WHAT’S NEXT: No. 1 Haddonfield hosts No. 3 Delran for the South Jersey Group 2 championship on Friday, Nov. 14. Lower Cape May’s season is complete.
