By DAVE O’SULLIVAN

Publisher

There’s a reason they are called playmakers. Because they make plays. It’s one thing to want to make big plays, to dream about making them when it counts, when your team really needs you to. It’s quite another to have the athleticism and, more importantly, the confidence in that athleticism to always be there for you when you need it.

South Jersey is blessed with some amazing athletes on the gridiron, and it never gets old watching them make jaw dropping plays that leave teammates with stunned expressions and cheerleaders swooning.

Bo Melton, a senior at Cedar Creek, just looks athletic. Even when he’s just walking around. That’s the difference between the average high school football player and the kind whose mom cook Sunday dinner for college coaches such as Urban Meyer and Jim Harbaugh. Melton was courted by dozens of the top college football programs in the nation before making the decision to attend Rutgers next year. It’s because of games like the one he had in the opening round of the state playoffs that college coaches were telling him how great he was in an effort to get his signature on a National Letter of Intent.

There was a play in the game when Middle Township’s Chris Rivera — a pretty good athlete with speed — caught a pass from Cameron Hamer down the right sideline. It looked like an easy touchdown after he beat the final Cedar Creek defender on the sideline. But Melton came streaking in from his safety position, launched himself into a full-extension dive while at the same time making a tomahawk swiping motion with his right hand to try to dislodge the ball, and brought Rivera down at the 30-yard line. Middle Township failed to score on that drive, and pretty much had no chance of stopping Melton on either side of the ball all day long.
Melton finished with more than 100 receiving yards and two touchdowns, ran for another touchdown, and, just for kicks, picked off a pass in the Pirates’ 36-14 victory.
Another guy who lit up Twitter with a video highlight in the second week of November was Kendall Elliott, Oakcrest’s senior quarterback. A week after shrugging off defenders and making plays all day long in an eventual 30-19 loss to Cedar Creek that put the Falcons on the outside looking in for the playoffs, Elliott turned in perhaps the best play of his career during a consolation game against Lacey Township. (The Lions faithful haven’t seen an athlete of this caliber since maybe back in the late 1980s, when former NFL running back Keith Elias was running through, over and around opponents while leading my alma mater to back-to-back state championships).
In the second quarter, Oakcrest faced a third-and-47 at their own 34-yard line. The Lions and Falcons were tied, 14-14, so conventional wisdom says run the ball, punt it away and flip the field, get back to work on defense. But when you have an athlete such as Elliott, even third-and-47 can be a plausible conversion.
Elliott dropped back, got flushed to his right, avoided a sack, spun out of another tackle and heaved a ball downfield — off his back foot. The ball went all the way to the Lacey 25-yard line in the air and was hauled in by Naji Hart, who scampered untouched into the end zone to give Oakcrest a 21-14 lead. The announcer on WLTS television said, “I can confidently say, I have never seen anything like that, nor will I ever witness a play like that again.”
(Quick shoutout to left guard Yanni Del Valle, who scooped up a fumble on the previous play to keep that drive alive.)
The play even mystified Oakcrest coach Eric Anderson, who has seen plenty of great plays from Elliott throughout Elliott’s high school career.
“That was a just a post-corner, trying to make something out of nothing. When he extends that play, you just hold your breath and hope something good happens,” Anderson said. “We just let him work his magic and hope for the best. Usually, something good happens when he starts moving around like that. It’s up there (in the top plays he’s ever made). You look at the couple of tackles he had to avoid, he spins out of those and steps up and makes that throw. It was wild.
“With Kendall, you just kind of watch, sit back and enjoy it. He has something you can’t teach and teams can’t prepare for because he is so elusive. He has the intangibles. He’s fun to watch. I was just jumping up and down and cheering. Everybody was going crazy. It’s something that is inside these types of guys, just the will to never give up, the will to never stop competing no matter what the score is or what’s at stake. Guys like that are competitors all the time on the field and there’s just something inside them.”
Reggie Jean-Charles, Holy Spirit’s bruising running back, and teammate Justin Figueroa fit into that category of playmakers, too. In the Spartans’ playoff blowout win over Montclair Kimberley in the opening round, those two were men among boys. Jean-Charles rushed for more than 200 yards and four touchdowns, while Figueroa plowed his way to 88 yards and also added two interceptions on defense.
These guys are so fun to watch, guys like the ones I mentioned plus players such as Kyle Dobbins and Josh Zamot of St. Augustine Prep, Isaih Pacheco of Vineland, Nazim Derry of Atlantic City and Ifreke Andy of Absegami have highlight-reel potential every time they step on the field. They make Friday nights and Saturday afternoons a heck of a lot of fun for sports reporters.
Contact Dave O’Sullivan: sully@acglorydays.com; on Twitter @GDsullysays