RUDE AWAKENING
by Rudy Brandl, Sports Editor
I’m not sure how I feel about Thanksgiving Day high school football. Maybe I’ll have a better idea after not covering a game on the holiday for the first time in 20 years.
Hillsborough High has been my primary football beat since joining Packet Publications in 1989. The Raiders used to play Somerville on Turkey Day and began a holiday rivalry with Montgomery earlier this decade, but the Route 206 neighbors have since moved that game to the first weekend of November.
I actually started covering Franklin in my first five years on the job and had the pleasure of watching the Warriors win two Central Jersey Group 3 championships. I covered my share of Franklin-Piscataway contests back in those days. Those two neighboring rivals are still playing, but the game usually gets moved to the weekend because at least one of the perennial powers is involved in the state playoffs.
Since then, I’ve spent most Turkey Days walking the sidelines with my trusty clipboard while Hillsborough beat up on either Somerville or Montgomery. I remember the Raiders losing once on a frigid day at Somerville’s Brooks Field in 1998. Last year, Montgomery beat the Raiders for the first time in the final Thanksgiving Day game of the series.
Opinions certainly are divided when you ask people if they like playing on Thanksgiving Day. Some athletic directors love it, others hate it. Some coaches want to play on the holiday, while others feel the game interrupts the momentum of the state playoffs.
I’ve also had coaches tell me losing on Thanksgiving Day ruins their holiday. I remember former Manville High head coach Steve Venuto joking that he had trouble digesting his turkey after a tough loss to rival Middlesex back in the mid 1990s.
There are also some folks who believe Thanksgiving should be reserved for family and not football. If you want to see football, turn on the television and watch the National Football League, which provides three games and nearly 10 hours of action.
Manville and Bound Brook are the only teams in Somerset County playing on Thanksgiving Eve this year. Even that game date was up in the air since the Crusaders were still alive in the Central Jersey Group 1 playoffs until last Friday night.
The actual Turkey Day football slate is thinner than ever. It will be strange not covering a game this year. I’ve had some great memories covering Hillsborough and Manville in the past two decades.
One of my favorite games ever was the 1993 game between Hillsborough and Somerville, which was the final game in the head coaching tenure of the late Otto Gsell. The Raiders and Pioneers entered the game winless, but you would never have known it by the way they played or by the size of the crowd at David A. Noonan Field in Hillsborough.
The place was packed and the Raiders treated their home fans to a 27-6 victory. Eric Jones and current New York Giants center Shaun O’Hara were juniors on that Hillsborough team.
A few years later, when younger brother Jared Jones was a junior, the Raiders lost a heartbreaker on a bitter-cold day at Brooks Field. Three strange and controversial pass interference penalties against the Raiders helped Somerville score the game-winning touchdown with eight seconds remaining. I’m sure the turkey didn’t taste too good in Hillsborough that day.
There was a gap between the Hillsborough-Somerville and Hillsborough-Montgomery series, which allowed me to cover a couple of Manville games on Thanksgiving Day. The 1999 battle in Manville ranks as one of the best I’ve seen.
Manville senior Drew Corsilli carried his team to a 16-13 victory over Bound Brook. Corsilli scored both touchdowns, kicked the game-winning field goal and deflected passes thrown to dangerous receiver Anthony Melesurgo on consecutive pass plays in the end zone in the closing seconds.
Franklin Andreyko, in his last game at Manville before transferring to Hillsborough, rushed for over 200 yards when the Mustangs drubbed Bound Brook in 2001. Manville’s feast that day truly started on the football field.
Hillsborough began its series with Montgomery the following year and won the first five games in the series. The Raiders unveiled their new tunnel on Thanksgiving Day in 2006 and defeated the Cougars. That might be the last time the Raiders play a home game on the holiday, at least for a while.
It was always nice to see the stars of the past and other HHS alumni on Thanksgiving. It was an opportunity for recent graduates to reunite with the HHS football family. I’ll miss that part of working on the holiday.
This year brings a different type of work since my family will be hosting Thanksgiving. I’ll be helping my wife baking pies, peeling potatoes, steaming vegetables and basting the turkey.
Instead of covering a game that features running up the middle or passing to an open receiver, I’ll have to settle for running to the table and passing the sweet potatoes. I think you can throw a pretty good spiral with a turkey leg.
Happy Thanksgiving!