Raiders top Lawrenceville in MAPL
By Bob Nuse, Sports Editor
Midway through the high school football season, the teams at West Windsor-Plainsboro High South and The Hun School appear to be on the verge of something special.
WW-P South improved to 5-0 with a convincing 37-7 win over Nottingham last Thursday. It’s the first time since 2008 the Pirates have opened the season with five straight wins. That year WW-P South reached the Central Jersey Group IV semifinals.
Like the Pirates, Hun is off to an unbeaten start as the Raiders improved to 4-0 with a 34-18 win over Lawrenceville on Friday. In addition to being 4-0, the Raiders are 2-0 in the Mid-Atlantic Prep League. Hun has a huge game coming up on Saturday when it hosts Blair, which is 4-0 overall and 1-0 in the MAPL.
In other games last week, Montgomery slipped to 1-4 with a 31-21 loss to Phillipsburg. Ryan Boyle rushed for 118 yards and scored three touchdowns in the loss. Princeton played tough before falling to Allentown, 10-7. The Little Tigers scored on a Colin Bell to Eric Shorter touchdown pass. WW-P North slipped to 0-5 with a 55-0 loss at Rancocas Valley.
With its win, WW-P South also moved to the top of the power points chart in CJ IV, where it is tied with South Brunswick and two points ahead of Jackson Memorial. The Pirates face WW-P North, Hamilton and Allentown over the next three weeks.
In the win over Nottingham, the offense put up big numbers again, while the defense continued to shut down the opposition. South has allowed just 24 points in its last four games.
”The defense played so great today,” said WW-P South coach Todd Smith, whose team scored points on defense when Brian Schoenauer returned an interception for a touchdown. “The secondary is so good. A pick six by anybody is always a great day. I told Schoenauer, ‘That’s your longest run from scrimmage, maybe we can do one where we actually hand it to you.’”
Quarterback Chris Evans passed for 199 yards and also ran for a 52-yard touchdown, while Schoenauer added three rushing touchdowns to his pick for a TD.
”It was a great effort from Schoenauer and Chris Evans scoring with his feet today,” Smith said. “It just showed another way we can hurt people. We’ve got a lot of weapons, I think we showcased them today.”
Evans also intercepted a pass, his sixth in the last three weeks.
In its win, Hun jumped out to a 21-6 lead in the second quarter with quarterback John Loughery connecting twice with David Dudeck on touchdown passes and Abdul-Malik Majeed adding a touchdown run. Just before halftime, Loughery was forced from the game with an injury. He completed seven passes for 155 yards prior to leaving the game.
Lawrenceville got to within 21-18 before the Raiders added a pair of touchdown runs by Dudeck, who moved to quarterback after Loughery was injured. Dudeck finished the game with four touchdowns — two receiving and two rushing.
Dudeck was the Raiders’ quarterback last year, but moved to receiver when Loughery came to the team this year.
”I said to Dave. Now you remember everything from being QB last year and he said, ‘Dad I got it all,’” Hun coach Dave Dudeck said. “He hadn’t taken a snap all season. This week we will work on some different things. We will get him involved with that. Hopefully John will be back. If not we will do some things so we will be able to be more multi-dimensional next week.”
The Raiders will face a challenge from Blair in a game with huge MAPL title ramifications.
”With the parity in our league we need to improve on turnovers, penalties and we have had injuries,” the elder Dudeck said. “When you don’t have a lot of kids you have to take it week by week. So right now we are going to enjoy this win. An obstacle we had today was we did have some penalties and we did have some turnovers, so we kept on having to plough through them.
”And then also losing our QB, that was a tough thing to deal with, but our kids had a lot of heart. They stayed tight as a team and they fought and they overcame that obstacle. We are real proud of what we did.”