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Football: Borja’s kick, solid defense helps Bound Brook edge Pingry

Senior Michael Borja backs a strong defensive effort with a 35-yard field goal that proved the winner for the Crusaders

Simeon Pincus
@SimeonPincus

BERNARDS – The Bound Brook High School football team was riding high entering Week 3 action, after convincing victories over Manville and South Hunterdon to being its season. And considering Pingry’s first two games had pretty much gone exactly the opposite as had the Crusaders, the smart money was on Bound Brook waltzing in and out of Parsons Field with another easy victory.

In the end, Bound Brook did remain undefeated, but it was anything but easy, as a Big Blue bullet went whizzing by the Crusaders collective heads, and if it wasn’t for the right kicking leg of a two-way senior lineman and a defense that remained consistent, that bullet might have smacked Bound Brook right in the loss column.

Senior Michael Borja rewarded his team’s stellar defensive effort by booting a 35-yard field goal with 2:45 left in the game Saturday to erase a two-point deficit, as Bound Brook overcame a poor offensive outing Saturday, escaping The Pingry School with a 14-6 Mid-State 38 Union Division victory.

“This is a battle, it’s always been a battle,” said Bound Brook coach Dom Longo, whose club was held without a touchdown until there was 1:14 remaining and the Crusaders already had the lead. “They (Pingry) have tough kids, and it was a tough game. In the past, I think we lose this game. So whatever these kids are buying into, us winning, (it helped us) come out on top.

"Did we think we’d be able to do things much easier? Yeah. But it’s high school football. I can fill a pad up with excuses, but I’m happy we won. But we have to get much better for Friday against Belvidere.”

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Bound Brook’s only points entering its penultimate drive came on a pair of safeties, one on Pingry’s first possession of the game, and the second late in the third quarter, as, each time, Big Blue quarterback Spencer Spellman was brought down in his own end zone.

But while Pingry had done a great job for most of the afternoon shutting Bound Brook down on third and fourth-down conversion attempts, the drive that proved to be the difference featured a key third-down conversion as quarterback Alex Navarro escaped a would-be tackle for a loss that would have brought up fourth down near midfield. Instead, he picked up four yards and a first down to sustain the drive.

After one of far too many penalties made it 1st-and-15 and Bound Brook was unable to pick up a first down, Longo called on Borja for a 35-yard attempt, and the senior booted it just over the crossbar to give his team the lead it would not relinquish.

“I didn’t think it was going to come down to me kicking it,” said Borja, who began kicking last season because the team had a need. “But it came down to it and I (am glad) I got my job done.”

“He’s a tough kid,” Longo said. “He’s an offensive and defensive lineman, so he’s playing both ways and he’s kicking off, so it’s got to take a toll on your leg. Then to call him to bang the game-winning field goal, he doesn’t show a lot of emotion, but he got it done.”

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Pingry went 4-and-out on its ensuing possession, before the Crusaders put the game away on a 28-yard touchdown run by Joshua Ejiogu with 1:55 left, with Borja adding the extra point. The Big Blue had one more shot at a miracle, driving down the field and getting all the way to the 25-yard line, but Mason Horsburgh grabbed an interception to stifle the charge.

“Our defense certainly kept us in the game,” said Longo, whose club held Pingry to just 129 yards of total offense, including just 41 yards on the ground. “They (Pingry) really couldn’t move the ball much, so our offense has to get much better. We scored 35 points in the first game and 48 points in the second game, so it’s clicked before. Either they schemed it right or our guys didn’t understand the game plan coming in, but it seemed like they had 15 guys on the field sometimes. Every time we tried to adjust and run something else, they stopped us, too.”

Pingry, a team already low on numbers and hampered even more so by injury, including ailments that kept three of its seven seniors sidelined Saturday, got its points in the final minutes of the first half on a five-yard Spellman run, set up by a couple of long completions to Ryan Feely (19 yards) and Channing Russell (32 yards).

But the real story for the Big Blue was a defense that allowed just 37 first-half rushing yards and just 129 total first-half yards, coming up with three big sacks by Jason Resnick and clutch second-half interceptions by Joe Possumato and Spellman.

“We’re outgunned, and that’s why we want out of the Mid-State 38; we’re dangerously close to not fielding a team right now,” said Pingry coach Chris Shilts, whose club is playing its final year in the league, and credited defensive coordinator Jon Leef with the unit’s play Saturday. “But we have great kids, they play very hard, they play for each other, and I couldn’t be prouder. It’s just sometimes I wish we had more 6-4, 280 kids.”

Still, as Pingry falls to 0-3, coming so close to knocking off an undefeated team that was heavily favored Saturday doesn’t make the setback any easier to take.

“We had a shot to win and we didn’t,” Shilts said. “There’s some mistakes we made and mistakes I made. We had a shot to do this. A loss it still a loss. I’m not at all into moral victories. We need to start winning games. The effort is great, the effort is winnable, the effort can win games, but we’re still making mental mistakes.”

Simeon Pincus can be reached atSPincus@GannettNJ.com. Follow him on Twitter @SimeonPincus and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/SimeonPincusCN

Bound Brook junior Joshua Ejigou runs the ball during the Crusaders 14-6 victory over Pingry on Saturday.