Football: Sloppy start to season for Hill
By Jeff Stover
jstover@21st-centurymedia.com
@MercuryXStover on Twitter
POTTSTOWN >> It was not, by anybody’s estimate, your classic, garden variety opening-night football game.
The Hill School’s lid-lifter with Wyoming Seminary ended up with a one-hour delay due to lightning strikes, and a torrential flooding rain thrown in. And when the game finally got going after 8 p.m., the action was punctuated by no less than 40 penalties.
Through it all, Wyoming Seminary came up with a 20-12 victory at Pottstown High’s Grigg Memorial Field. At the same time, the Rams generated enough excitement on the gridiron to support the promise of a more productive game this season.
“It was the usual opening-night stuff,” Hill head coach Jeff Hollway said. “Mistakes that are correctible.”
Wyoming got on the scoreboard less than three minutes in, Prince Hall going seven yards through his right tackle for a 6-0 lead. The Blue Knights upped their lead to 13-0 when Cooper Heisey found Todd Phillips on the receiving end of an 11-yard pass play 7:29 before the half.
The Hill got untracked at the start of the second half. After seeing Mario Mazzccua’s electrifying 80-yard kickoff-return touchdown nullified by a personal-foul call, Mazzccua went 65 yards two plays later to get the Rams on the scoreboard, cutting Wyoming’s lead to 13-6.
Mazzccua had a big debut for the Hill. The post-grad from Philadelphia, who helped Neumann-Goretti got two rounds into the PIAA Class 2A state playoffs, ran 18 times for 147 yards along with his monster scoring run.
“He has the stuff,” Hollway said of Mazzccua. “We need to tighten some stuff up.”
The Rams cut the Knights’ lead to one point (13-12) in the closing minute of the third frame, quarterback Javon Clements hooking up with Justin Adedinsewo on a 10-yard touchdown pass. The drive was set up by Payton Reid intercepting a Heisey pass at the Wyoming 41.
The Knights gave themselves some breathing room when, at the 4:33 mark of the fourth quarter, Heisey found Phillips on the receiving end of a 21-yard scoring pass. Will Ziegler’s second conversion kick staked WS to a 20-12 lead.
The Hill had two more possessions down the stretch, but Seminary’s defense forced the Rams into turning the ball over on downs the first time and left at midfield as time ran out.
The locals were in position to score midway through the third quarter, pushing the ball to the Knights’ one-yard line. But Clements was stacked at the goal line on fourth down, and Seminary dodged the bullet before the Hill got its second TD inside the final minute of the third stanza.
“It was a great game … back and forth,” Wyoming head coach Jim Anderson said. “A lot of ugly penalties that can’t be tolerated. We need to eliminate the personal fouls.”
To the Blue Knights’ credit, the infractions — 29 of them for more than 200 yards — served as a learning tool.
“How you react when you lose your temper,” was how Anderson defined ‘toughness.’ “It’s resiliency. I’m proud of the kids for showing that.”
Mazzccua The Hill defense forced Heisey into throwing a pair of interceptions.
NOTES
The night’s weather result: Torrential rain half-hour before 7 p.m. scheduled start. One 30-minte rain delay, then another with about two minutes to go in first delay period. The rain stopped around 12 minutes into the second delay period.
