Jags overcomes mistakes to win in Smith’s debut

BY MIKE WHITE
Staff Writer

JACKSON — For the opening 12 minutes of the first half, the Jackson High School football team dominated its opponent.

The Jags moved the ball effortlessly on the ground, played stellar defense and built what appeared to be an insurmountable 20-point cushion.

But a combination of miscues and a scrappy effort from its opponent left the Jaguars little breathing room late in the second half.

Fortunately, Jackson held on to post a 28-20 win over visiting Marlboro High School in a Shore Conference American Division game last Friday night at Munley Field.

The event was the season opener for both schools and, more importantly, the first win for Mike Smith, who replaced Reggie Lawrence as head coach of the Jags.

"It’s nice to get the first win out of the way," Smith said. "We had a real impressive opening quarter, both offensively and defensively. But we’re still a young team and the mistakes we made later in the game hurt us. Still, I had confidence in our guys even when the game tightened up in the second half."

The Jags were guilty of committing 10 penalties and two fumbles. Smith realizes those kinds of mistakes will come back to bite them as the season progresses.

"We need to grow from our mistakes," Smith said.

"We need to learn how to finish teams when we build that kind of advantage early in the game. Veteran teams put games like that away."

Jackson running back Will Clayton paced the Jackson offense with 95 yards on 15 carries. Clayton scored on TD runs of 1 and 9 yards.

Smith praised the work of his workhorse back.

"For a kid who hasn’t played organized football in three years, he did an outstanding job," Smith said. "He really stepped up his level of play. We couldn’t be more pleased with his effort for the first time out."

The Jags darted to a 20-0 lead after one quarter. Jackson scored on a 1-yard plunge from Clayton, followed by a 32-yard TD pass from Bobby Cole to Dan Morvay, and a 28-yard run from Rich Leone.

"Everyone was playing up to potential early in the game," Smith said. "But as young teams have a tendency to do, we made some mistakes and Marlboro took advantage."

Jackson plays its next two games on the road. The Jags travel to Manalapan to play that team at 7 p.m. Friday.

"We’ve always had a difficult time against Manalapan," Smith said. "Even when we had those two state champi­onship teams, they played us very tough. They throw a lot of different looks at you so you need to constantly make adjust­ments throughout the course of the game."

Lakewood falls to Ocean

Without the services of senior running back Dwayne Jones, who was sidelined with an injury, the Lakewood High School offense struggled to get untracked in its season-opening 39-6 loss at Ocean last Friday.

Ocean amassed more than 300 yards of total offense to win its first game of the 2003 campaign.

Lakewood, which hosts Lacey Township at 1:30 p.m. Saturday, scored its only touchdown in the opening quar­ter.

Denroy Anglin scored on a 7-yard run to bring the Piners to within 12-6.

But Ocean reeled off 27 consecutive points to post the final margin of victory.

The Piners rushed for more than 100 yards as a team. Ed Loney was the lead­ing Lakewood ball carrier with 35 yards on four attempts.

Burlington stops New Egypt

Fred Weingart connected on field goals of 33 and 35 yards as New Egypt dropped its season opener against a pow­erful Burlington Township squad, 55-18.

Matt O’Connell caught a 25-yard touchdown pass and Angel Ortiz added a 5-yard scoring run for New Egypt.

Howell struggles against Brick

It looks like Brick Township, the most successful program in the Shore area, could have another powerhouse. The Green Dragons ground out 360 yards against young and inexperienced Howell in their 30-0 win.

Dan Dornacker had 171 yards and three touchdowns for Brick. He had all three scores and 160 yards in the first half alone.

Howell will turn to home cooking in an effort to get its first win of the season. It will host Central Regional High School, Bayville, a 24-7 loser to Toms River South in its season opener, on Friday.