FOOTBALL
By: Tim Falls
The Lawrence High School varsity football team posted its first shutout of the season.
The Cardinals held Trenton scoreless in a 40-0 victory at home last Saturday.
Still, the Cardinals suffered a setback when they lost sophomore quarterback Anthony Russ to a broken leg late in the third quarter.
Russ will be out for at least four weeks and junior Brian Mills will take over as quarterback.
"Brian’s already on the job as they say," said Lawrence coach Rob Radice. "Brian’s been a quarterback for two years. I think he’s going to do fine. He’s got to do fine, we don’t have another option. I know Brian is capable."
Aside from the injury to Russ, Lawrence went unscathed in the game against the Tornadoes.
"We take a lot of pride when playing on our own field," said Radice. "We came out and made them try and match our intensity. They didn’t match our intensity."
The Cardinals set the tone early by stopping Trenton on its first possession and scoring on their own.
Senior Jim Gorski caught a pass Russ over the center, turned and ran it straight in for a 28-yard touchdown reception. Mills ran in the two-point conversion to send Lawrence ahead, 8-0.
"Our offense is our best friend," said Lawrence’s defensive coordinator Anthony Ammirata. "We got up early and it made Trenton more predictable. I had them right where I wanted them."
The Cardinals’ defense stifled and stopped Trenton handidly.
While Lawrence gained 405 yards of total offense, the Cardinals held Trenton to 53 yards on offense.
"We wanted to come out hard and stop them from getting going," said junior Will Nahan. "They are an athletic team, we didn’t want them to get the chance to make big plays. We made sure to shut them down."
Nahan, senior Maurice Lassiter, sophomore Jeremy Arwas, and junior Adam Joyce all had sacks showing how effective the Lawrence defense was in the shutout. Another impressive statistic highlighting the Lawrence defense was how many first downs each team gained. Lawrence had 18 first downs, while Trenton only had 4.
Offensively, senior Bayshawn Wells broke through Trenton’s defense for 101 yards on 14 carries and had three touchdowns.
Wells scored on a 5-yard run and a 14-yard run in the second quarter, but Trenton blocked both kicks on the extra point attempts. Wells had a 13-yard run in the third quarter, but Lawrence a two-point conversion pass failed.
Mills had a 1-yard touchdown run in the third quarter, while Nick Cannon had a 25-yard touchdown run in the fourth.
Trenton came close to breaking the shutout late in the fourth quarter with a pass into the end zone in the final 30 seconds, but Lawrence sophomore Jerry McClure made the catch and ran the interception out to the 50-yard line to keep the Tornadoes from scoring.

