By: Sean Moylan
The Hightstown High football team can attack in so many different ways that it played its sloppiest game of the season and still found a way to crush Hopewell Valley, 33-5, in front of a happy Homecoming crowd last Friday night.
"We had a huge crowd and it was standing room only. At the Pep Rally the entire student body was there," said Hightstown head football coach Ed Kopp, who is sensing a new excitement for football at the school.
It took the Rams a little time to get going. Hightstown ran back the opening kickoff 95 yards for a score only to have the touchdown called back because of a holding penalty.
"We killed ourselves with penalties and turnovers," said Kopp, whose team had a short week of practices because of the holiday. "We had a 70-yard touchdown called back (another holding penalty). But what good teams do is they keep fighting until they get the job done."
And now it’s certainly safe to say that Hightstown is a good team and one of its best players is Kenny Amponsa, who opened up the scoring with a spectacular 36-yard first-quarter touchdown run, his fourth TD of the season. With 139 yards on just 14 carries, Amponsa ended up running wild on Hopewell’s defense. More importantly, he helped open up a Hightstown passing game.
"They (Hopewell’s defense) came out with something I didn’t expect. They were afraid of our speed (the outside running of Tim Lawson and company) so we ran Kenny Amponsa up the middle. Kenny has gotten better every week and our offensive line has gotten better every week," said Kopp. "I told Joey Medici (Hightstown’s quarterback) before the game that if we threw the ball six times that would be a lot."
But Hopewell was giving Hightstown’s quarterback a lot of room on bootleg plays, so Medici decided to take advantage with a pair of late second-quarter touchdown strikes to Joey Schettini of 6 and 5 yards, respectively.
"Joey (Medici) could have ran for 200 yards but we had receivers open," added Kopp, whose talented quarterback connected on six of eight passes for 80 yards.
With Hightstown leading 19-5 in the third quarter, Medici found Schettini open once again, this time for a 37-yard touchdown.
"Schettini’s 37-yard touchdown was actually on a broken play which was originally designed to go to Dan Ratner. Medici looked at Ratner and saw it wasn’t there. Then he made a head’s up play and threw a 7-yard pass to Schettini. And he (Schettini) broke four tackles for a touchdown.
"Medici has been very accurate and he’s been able to exploit what they give us. This was Joey Medici’s game and it was Schettini’s (five catches for 72 yards) game."
The game also belonged to the entire Hightstown defense, which held Hopewell to just four first downs and 48 yards rushing. The Rams’ "D" surrendered just a long 40-yard field. Hopewell got its other 2 points on a third-quarter safety. Moreover, Mike Beranzal picked off a pass in the fourth quarter and scored a 17-yard touchdown for the Rams.
"It’s nice that our defense outscored their offense," remarked Kopp, who got a tremendous effort out of all of his defensive backs (Beranzal, Steve Ladd and Corey Delacruz). And Marc Wargo had a sack.
Kopp also thought that his scout team, special teams standouts and role players (Matt Bryant, Chris Stout, Francis Pulhaski, Tommy Boyle, Ian Sukienk, Max Drazvik and Keith Downs and Johnny Lee-You, who had 16 yards rushing) were at their best in the Hopewell game.
"They’re the glue of our team and they often get overlooked," Kopp noted. "This game is all about emotion and confidence."
Playing its Homecoming game in front of the big crowd, the Rams played through some early game mistakes and dominated. Now as the games get a little tougher in the next few weeks, we’ll see what the undefeated Rams (4-0) can really do. Hightstown is scheduled to host West Windsor-Plainsboro North this Friday.

