Princeton Packet Athlete of the Week

Lupo runs wild in Pirates win

By: Justin Feil
   The West Windsor-Plainsboro South football team effectively has rotated running backs all season.
   The Pirates have tried to spread their workload between Stuart Adams, E.J. Burgess, Ryan Lupo and Brian Morris to keep all of them fresh. But when WW-P South fell behind Colts Neck, 21-17, after an 86-yard punt return with 6:25 left in the opening round of the Central Jersey Group III playoffs Saturday, Lupo made sure he was going to get the call though he’d already amassed a career-high number of carries.
   "I wanted to be in there," said the junior tailback. "I wanted to make something happen. The line was making enormous holes. I was just getting caught by the foot a couple times."
   Lupo made sure no one caught him when the Pirates needed it most. On first down, he rumbled for 12 yards to the Pirates’ 34-yard line. The next play, he made it through another huge hole and never was touched on his way to a 66-yard touchdown that gave the top-seeded Pirates a 24-21 win over No. 8 Colts Neck.
   The run was part of a 258-yard rushing performance on 26 carries — both career highs — for Lupo. It was his 15th touchdown of the season, one off the school record, despite his limited touches this year. Lupo also started and played safety all game for a WW-P South defense that allowed just one drive by Colts Neck while limiting the visitors to six first downs and 160 yards of offense. The playoff win was the first since 1987 and a school-record tying ninth win for the Pirates.
   Ryan Lupo is the Princeton Packet Athlete of the Week.
   "We definitely wanted to get him the ball," said WW-P South head coach Todd Smith, whose team hosts Nottingham in the CJ III semifinals 1 p.m. Saturday. "It’s such a good group of backs. He got a lot more carries than usual. I didn’t know he had that many. We controlled the clock the entire game, which is what we want to do. E.J. still had his 17 carries too and would have been over 100 yards but he something like a 40-yard run called back by a penalty.
   "Ryan is definitely an I-back. He’s got a unique ability. He’s big enough to run through tackles and he can elude people. If he gets by people, it’s hard to catch him. He’s kind of the perfect high school back. He’s fast, agile and strong. He’s a hard guy to bring down."
   Colts Neck is the latest team to discover that fact. They could not hold him in check all game, and with the game on the line, it took the Pirates and Lupo just two plays to recapture the lead they’d held most of the game until the Colts Neck punt return.
   "After the punt return," Smith said, "he said, ‘I want the ball.’ He has big-play ability.
   "Going down by three, we need to get the ball back. With six minutes left, he didn’t hesitate. He’s a clutch performer. He knew what we needed to do. And I thought he played a great game at safety."
   Smith had seen the same resolve earlier in the regular season when the Pirates struggled early against Hightstown. Lupo wanted to provide a spark, and he did with a huge run to open the game up for the Pirates.
   "He called the play," Smith said. "He said, ‘I want to run this’ and we gave him the ball and he broke it 70 or 80 yards down the sideline. He has that ability."
   Doing so in the regular season is one thing. Doing so in the playoffs, in the midst of a career performance on a bigger platform is another.
   "I had no idea I had that many carries," Lupo said. "All year, I’ve had 10 or 12 every game. That game was 26. It was really tiring."
   It made for a long day for Lupo, one that he won’t soon forget, not just for the game he had but for the magnitude of the moment.
   "We haven’t been to the playoffs since 2002," he said. "We haven’t won a playoff game since 1987. I wasn’t even born before their last playoff win. Regular-season wins mean nothing now that we’re in the playoffs. We wanted to show the Shore teams that we’re the real deal. We wanted to make a statement.
   "It’s a real big deal to win. It’s awesome to be a part of this team. We want to keep the run going."
   Lupo knows that as much as he’ll play a role in that continued success, he isn’t doing it by himself. A guard when he started playing football in the peewee division, he hasn’t forgotten his roots.
   "Our offensive line is probably the best in the CVC," he said. "They’ll open up holes for whoever is back there. They all work so hard. They’re awesome. The whole offensive line, they’re so good."
   They helped Lupo rush for a career high against Colts Neck in a game the Pirates all counted as their biggest of the season, even while the score was one of their closest. They didn’t have to be born before 1987 to know what a big win it was Saturday.
   "There was a different feeling," Lupo said. "It was the playoffs. It means so much. We wanted to get this so bad. This is the best start in program history. You’re playing with everything you can. It was so tiring. I put so much into it. We all put our heart and soul into it. We all worked had for the team, the coaches and the school. It was awesome"
   Ryan Lupo had a lot to do with it.