SWAMPSCOTT – Jim Rudloff stood on Blocksidge Field on a picture-perfect day for football and, as his Marblehead High players celebrated a 28-21 victory that extended their winning streak over their archrival to 11, he knew they had dodged a bullet – if that’s possible when you dominate a game statistically as the Magicians did.
“We did everything possible that we could do as a high school football team to give them that game. It just felt like we just kept slamming ourselves in the foot with a hammer,” the Marblehead coach said. “But I’m just happy it turned out well because the kids deserved to win today’s game. They worked hard. I think today we were the better team.”
Here are some stats: first downs – Marblehead 17, Swampscott 5; rushing yards – 177-16; passing – 154-115 (with the Big Blue picking up 87 yards on one play); time of possession – 32 minutes to 16.
Yet, more than halfway through the fourth quarter, the score was tied 21-21, which speaks to the resiliency of the Big Blue and their first-year head coach, Peter Bush, who took over this year after 12 seasons as an assistant.
“I think Coach Bush and his team played great. They did a wonderful job, and I don’t mean to take anything away from them, but it would have been a shame today if just on those couple of weird plays that we had lost it,” Rudloff said. “A lot of those were mistakes that we made, but it was just wonderful to have a win on Thanksgiving.”
The first of the “weird” plays to which Rudloff referred came in the form of a Jack Hazell 98-yard kickoff return for a touchdown in the first quarter that tied the game at 7-7, after Brooks Keefe had given the Magicians the lead with a 2-yard run that capped a 37-yard drive that he set up with an interception and 18-yard return.
Hazell took the kickoff at the 2, worked his way to the left sideline and found daylight. Kicker Greg Motorny had the last chance to catch him but Hazell ran away for the touchdown.
“That’s something that we work on every day in practice, so it’s nothing new to the kids,” Bush said. “Our kids take pride in it, and when you get Sam Nadworny and Jack Hazell as your two returners, it makes me look even better.”
The other big play that kept the Big Blue in the game was an 87-yard pass play from Jack Spear to Joe Marino in the third quarter with Swampscott facing third-and-22 from its own 8-yard line. Spear scrambled to his right out of trouble, threw back against the grain and found a streaking Marino, who looked like he was gone but was caught by Cam Quigley at the Marblehead 5. Two plays later Nadworny scored and it was 21-21 with 3:36 left in the third.
“Extremely concerned, because the problem is there’s not a fix to it when it’s mental errors that are being made over and over again,” Rudloff said of the deadlock that carried into the fourth. “The first solution is to replace that kid with the next best kid, but sooner or later you run out of next-best kids and so you’re trying to make those corrections. Our kids did a really nice job making the corrections. For every big mistake that someone made today, we saw that same student-athlete take an opportunity to correct it a couple of plays later.”
Three plays after his kickoff return, Hazell intercepted a pass and returned it 34 yards to the Marblehead 10, setting up a 5-yard TD pass from Spear to Marino on fourth-and-goal from the 5, a throw that was deflected by a defender before Marino grabbed it in the back of the end zone.
Don’t look now, but the Big Blue were leading, 14-7, with three minutes left in the first quarter.
Marblehead responded with a 13-play drive that stalled at the Swampscott 18, but the defense forced a punt that traveled only 26 yards, giving Marblehead the ball at the 38. Keefe carried four times in six plays, finishing it off with a 3-yard scoring run. The senior running back was a workhorse for the Magicians, with 89 yards on 20 carries to go with five receptions for 20 yards, all while not at full strength.
“He was really banged up at the end of the game. We knew we had to run the ball today and put the ball in Brooks’ hands and he did a great job for us,” Rudloff said. “It wasn’t the total number of yards he had, it was the fact that he took a pounding for four quarters and didn’t let anyone else go in there for him, so it was a great game on his behalf.”
Marblehead, which finished at 5-5, opened the second half with a 12-play, 78-yard scoring drive that featured first-down conversions on third-and-12 and third-and-9. Colt Wales, who split time at quarterback with Finn Gallup, scored on a 2-yard run.
“I just think that we had them on the ropes and a couple third- and fourth-and-longs, we just couldn’t get off the field to get the offense back the ball,” Bush said. “And that’s what football is. It comes down to who’s going to make more plays, and in the end, they made more. But I’m proud of the kids. Our backs were against the wall constantly and we hung in there.”
Rudloff was impressed with the resiliency and soundness of Swampscott, which went 6-5 in Bush’s inaugural season as head coach.
“The one thing that you notice in all the Swampscott games is they are fundamentally sound,” he said. “They’re kind of the opposite of Marblehead. They’re not going to make a dumb play. Everything they do is well thought out. The kids are very well coached, and if you take a nap on them, they’re going to catch you. And that’s what happened today.”
In the end, however, the rivalry game ended the same as the previous 10, with the Magicians on top.
“You know, we made a bunch of crucial mistakes at the wrong times, but, we played hard the whole game,” Keefe said. “I thought our defense was really strong, besides a couple of mistakes here and there. They were hitting hard. Props to Swampscott, they played a hard game. It’s still a rivalry, no matter what.”
