Senior transfer makes a splash in season debut, helps Schalick end 14-game losing streak over 18 years to Penns Grove; McDade has big game in Pennsville rout, Belinfanti breaks out for Woodstown
By Al Muskewitz
Riverview Sports News
PITTSGROVE – Roneem Thomas has been waiting all summer for Friday night to get here. When he finally got the chance to play, he definitely made an impression.
Thomas had to sit Schalick’s first three games of the season to satisfy the state’s senior transfer rule, so his senior debut came Friday against Penns Grove. He was a factor on both sides of the ball and played a big role in helping the Cougars win 21-2 and end 18 years of frustration against the Red Devils.
It was Schalick’s first win over Penns Grove since Oct. 7, 2006 (a span of 6,558 days) and snapped a 14-game losing streak in the series.
“That’s nice to know, history and stuff like that,” Cougars coach Mike Wilson said, “but it’s all about winning tonight; that’s what matters.”
Thomas was back on familiar ground when he joined the Cougars. He went to school with most of the current players on the team through eighth grade (he’s the cousin of junior slot/safety Levi Feeney-Childers). He moved away to Brunswick, Ga., came back to New Jersey last year and played at Williamstown, then returned to Schalick this summer so he could finish his high school career with the players he started with.
Wilson knew the versatile 5-foot-7, 170-pounder was going to be a factor on offense — he had a run for 3 yards and a catch for 13 Friday — but Thomas made his biggest impact in his first game on defense.
Pressed into a start at MIKE linebacker because of an injury, Thomas was credited with 10 tackles, two assists and stopped Penns Grove quarterback Melo Erickson on back-to-back runs inside the 3 early in the fourth quarter. The last one stymied Erickson on fourth down short of the goal line to keep it a 7-0 game. He got the defensive game ball for his efforts.
“I just was hungry, man,” he said. “That senior transfer (rule) kind of stuck me back a little bit, but I was just ready, ready to go.
“I was just locked in. I stayed locked in, stayed focused, stayed to my grind, stayed with my keys, just focused. My coach told me I know you’ve been waiting for this moment, stay focused and be ready to play.”
He showed he was right from the start. On his first play on defense he came up and put a big hit on the center. From that point on, safety Reggie Allen knew the Cougars had something special in Thomas.
“He’s a ballplayer,” Wilson said. “He grew up playing with these guys before he moved to Georgia. Came back, got hit by the senior transfer rule – not his fault – and he’s a big part of the team now.”
Penns Grove was position to get the tying touchdown after a bad punt snap was smothered at the 6 with 1:35 left in the third quarter. On second-and-goal from the 3, Allen anticipated the dive and stopped Knowledge Young for no gain, setting the stage for Thomas’ two big stops on Erickson.
The Red Devils did score out of the exchange. With the Cougars backed up against the goal line, the Devils wrapped up quarterback Kenai Simmons in the end zone for a safety to make it 7-2 with more than 10 minutes to play.
Schalick went 11-1 last year and earned a promotion into the tougher WJFL Diamond Division as a result. But the Cougars have struggled out of the gate and lost to their two most difficult opponents causing folks to wonder if the move was too big for them.
Cougars coach Mike Wilson rebuffed that assertion, saying the Cougars just had to “learn to play in bigger games every week.”
“It’s just the maturity of the program,” he said. “When you’re playing playoff competition every week, you have to be able to meet that level of expectation every game. We did that today. Now, we have things to clean up, but overall we played much better tonight than we have all year.”
“We showed everybody that we could play with anybody,” Allen said. “They’ve been doubting us from Woodstown, Cedar Grove. Those were two tough losses, but we bounced back tonight. It was a big win.”
The Cougars came to life in the fourth quarter, scoring two touchdowns, collecting three of their four interceptions and making their goal line stand. They held Penns Grove’s struggling offense to 75 total yards, but the Red Devils also were missing two key pieces, Isaiah Hill and KaRon Ceaser.
Schalick’s touchdowns came on a 15-yard run by Allen and a 53-yard pass from Simmons to Nylan Sutton. Allen rushed for 104 yards on eight carries and had Schalick’s three biggest gains of a night where yardage was hard to come by for either team before Sutton’s touchdown play.
“We’re usually a second half team,” Allen said. “We might score a touchdown or two (early), but then we’ll come out the second half and dominate them because we finally realize what we have to do.”
“We just wore them out as the game went on,” Wilson said.
The Red Devils had an 81-yard touchdown called back by a penalty in the first quarter. When the Cougars took possession they went 58 yards in 12 plays and two negative penalties capped by Simmons walking on from the 1 for the game’s first touchdown one play after being stopped at the 1 by Najee Paynter.
Schalick 21, Penns Grove 2
| PG (2) | SCHAL (21) | |
| 4 | 1st Downs | 10 |
| 24-57 | Rush-yards | 32-146 |
| 6-18-4 | Passing (C-A-I) | 6-10-0 |
| 18 | Passing yds | 95 |
| 1-0 | Fum-lost | 5-2 |
| 4-26.3 | Punts-avg | 1-38.0 |
| 6-40 | Pen-yds | 7-55 |
| Penns Grove | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2- | 2 |
| Schalick | 7 | 0 | 0 | 14- | 21 |
SCORING SUMMARY
S-Kenai Simmons 1 run (Hunter Dragotta kick), 2:38 1Q
PG-Safety, Kenai Simmons tackled in end zone, 10:49 4Q
S-Reggie Allen 15 run (Hunter Dragotta kick), 5:55 4Q
S-Nylan Sutton 53 pass from Kenai Simmons (Hunter Dragotta kick), 1:33 4Q
Pennsville 46, Audubon 0
PENNSVILLE – Eagles head coach Mike Healy called it “the closest to a complete game” his team has played this season.
Quarterback Robbie McDade threw three touchdown passes, Malik Rehmer had a TD run and catch, Rylan Hardy ran for two scores, Jovanni Rios had a pick-six and the defense pitched its first regular-season shutout since 2021.
“We just did a great job playing how we feel we were capable of,” Healy said. “We’ve still got some stuff to fix, but if felt great to kind of get things rolling finally.”
The three touchdowns by McDade were a career high. They went to Cole Campbell, Luke Wood and Rehmer. For Wood and Campbell, they were the first TD catches of their careers.
“We’ve been rushing the ball great, but we were not effective in the passing game,” Healy said. “But tonight (McDade’s) passes downfield were on point; we were able to take advantage of some stuff and just really be more balanced on offense. He played great tonight. That’s what we needed to be able to do to go forward.”
The Eagles scored a shutout over Keansburg in last year’s regional consolation final, but Friday was their first in the regular season since blanking Cumberland in October 2021. It was their widest margin of victory against an opponent since beating Penns Grove by 49 on Thanksgiving Day 2013.
Given Camden Catholic’s win over West Deptford, the win pulled the Eagles into a three-way tie for second place in the WJFL Patriot Division and they have division-leading Camden Catholic next week.
“Winning your division is one of our goals preseason and the fact now we still have a chance to do it hopefully it’s a little extra motivation for the kids because that’s something we want to be able to do,” Healy said. “The ability to still be in the division race is awesome. Losing that first game (to West Deptford) took things out of your hands is tough, but it’s awesome to heard we’re still in it.”
Woodstown 28, Woodbury 16
WOODSTOWN – New Woodstown coach Frank Trautz has a pretty good ride home after football Friday nights so anything that makes those rides enjoyable is a plus. The last three weeks that ride has been quite enjoyable.
Bryce Belinfanti rushed for 204 yards and scored three total touchdowns and the defense posted a shutout in the second half as the Wolverines rallied to turn back Woodbury 28-16 for their third straight win to open the season.
“It was close the whole game, it was a dogfight, for sure,” Trautz said. “We just made some adjustments (at halftime) on what I wanted to do and attack them offensively with. The kids came out and executed what we talked about both offensively and defensively.
“It was a real physical, tough football game, kind of like the games we’ve played with them in the past. It was a fight to the end. To get a win against an opponent of that quality is awful big.”
The Wolverines, 3-0 for the third year in a row, led twice in the first half, but each time the Thundering Herd answered to take the lead.
Belinfanti had an 85-yard TD run to open the scoring, but the Wolverines missed the extra point. The Herd answered with a 24-yard touchdown pass to go up 8-6.
Belinfanti’s second touchdown, a 37-yard pass from Jack Holladay, put Woodstown up 13-8, but Woodbury answered with a big pass play right before the half to take a 16-13 lead into the break. Woodbury quarterback Tim Holmes was 16-of-29 passing for 272 yards.
Belinfanti rushed for a career-high 204 yards on 27 carries. It was the second year in a row he rushed for more than 200 yards against the Herd. He went for 203 yards and three TDs on s career-high 30 carries against them last season.
“Wow, I didn’t even know I had 200 because the stat keeper couldn’t make the game,” he said. “We came in the game knowing Woodbury was going to take big shots.”
It was all Woodstown in the second half. The defense bottled up the Herd’s offense. Belinfanti scored his third touchdown on a 13-yard run and the Wolverines put it away on an 8-yard shuttle pass from Holladay to Garrett Leyman that capped a long fourth-quarter drive.
“Coming out of halftime I knew I was going to have to hit bit for sure and we took a lot of time off the clock,” Belinfanti said. “The score that put the game away was an amazing call by Coach Trautz.”
One of those type things that give you a warm and fuzzy feeling for a long ride home.
Woodstown 28, Woodbury 16
| WBURY (16) | WTOWN (28) | |
| 8 | 1st Downs | 14 |
| 21-1 | Rushing | 37-224 |
| 16-29-0 | Passes | 3-6-1 |
| 272 | Passing | 90 |
| 2 | Fumbles | 1 |
| 4-25.0 | Punts | 3-37.0 |
| 6-54 | Penalties | 2-15 |
| Woodbury | 0 | 16 | 0 | 0- | 16 |
| Woodstown | 6 | 7 | 7 | 8- | 28 |
SCORING SUMMARY
WT-Bryce Belinfanti 85 run (kick failed)
WB-Elijah Young 24 pass from Tim Holmes (Thomas Lewis run)
WT-Bryce Belinfanti 37 pass from Jack Holladay (Jake Ware kick)
WB-Shiwoe Varpilah 74 pass from Tim Holmes (Tim Holmes run)
WT-Bryce Belinfanti 13 run (Jake Ware kick)
WT-Garrett Leyman 8 pass from Jack Holladay (Brett Rowand pass from Jack Holladay)
| WJFL DIAMOND DIVISION | DIV | ALL |
|---|---|---|
| Glassboro | 2-0 | 3-0 |
| Woodstown | 2-0 | 3-0 |
| Schalick | 1-1 | 2-2 |
| Woodbury | 1-1 | 1-2 |
| Penns Grove | 0-2 | 1-3 |
| Salem | 0-2 | 0-4 |
THURSDAY’S GAMES
Glassboro 46, Salem 0
FRIDAY’S GAMES
Schalick 21, Penns Grove 2
Woodstown 28, Woodbury 16
| WJFL PATRIOT DIVISION | DIV | ALL |
|---|---|---|
| Camden Catholic | 2-0 | 3-0 |
| West Deptford | 2-1 | 2-2 |
| Paulsboro | 2-1 | 3-1 |
| Pennsville | 2-1 | 2-2 |
| Collingswood | 1-2 | 2-2 |
| Audubon | 0-2 | 1-2 |
| Overbrook | 0-2 | 2-2 |
THURSDAY’S GAME
Paulsboro 47, Collingswood 7
FRIDAY’S GAMES
Overbrook 26, Florence 0
Pennsville 46, Audubon 0
Camden Catholic 38, West Deptford 20
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