WAYNE \u2212 In the game of football, there is a playbook. But in the game of life, there is no playbook.
The Ridgewood football team experienced the game of life this past week.
On Tuesday, a former player from last year\u2019s team, linebacker Preston Stott, died unexpectedly.
On Wednesday, one this year\u2019s players, injured fullback Tommy Eickmeyer, lost his mother, Brenda, to an illness she had been battling
On Friday, the Maroons stepped onto the field at Wayne Hills (1-6) amid a swirl of emotions, just hours after attending the wake for Preston Stott. Buoyed by more than two dozen of Stott\u2019s former teammates from the past two years in attendance on the sideline, Ridgewood struggled to find its game in a scoreless first half.
At halftime, the camaraderie of the locker room helped bring a sense of normality to the most abnormal of days.
The Maroons (3-3) came flying out in the second half with four straight touchdown drives to secure a 27-0 win. Once it was over, there was a sense that, as a team and a family, they had found a way to honor Stott\u2019s memory.
\u201cHe was here (two weeks ago) on the sideline at the Passaic Tech game. The spot he was in and how he was feeling, he still came there to support us,\u201d senior Max Messineo said. \u201cWe said it at halftime, if he could be there to support us, then we needed to go out there and honor him on every play and every single down. We can do it for him. It was all for Preston.\u201d
Colin Burns (20 carries, 128 yards, three touchdowns) and Colin Lake (11 carries, career-high 116 yards, one touchdown) benefitted from a spirited effort by the offensive line in the second half.
\u201cWe weren\u2019t hitting our blocks and we weren\u2019t sticking on our blocks (in the first half),\u201d senior guard Joe Ross said. \u201cCoach Watson pulled the five linemen to the side and told us that this game was on us. ‘Stop thinking and start playing,’ and that\u2019s what we did,\u201d
The defense added four interceptions (two by Zach Kranz, and one each by Leo Grace and Charlie Merrick), one week after picking off five passes against Eastside. The Maroons have shut out their opponents in back-to-back weeks and have only allowed a team to score more than 10 points once this season.
\u201cThis has been so hard,\u201d a teary-eyed coach Torre Watson said. \u201cIt was a devastating week. These kids are teenagers; we went to a wake today. It was so difficult for them to do what they did and yet somehow, they were able to whip their way past that.
“I\u2019m just so proud of them, proud of this community, proud of everybody. Preston, then Brenda, everything just compounded. You saw that in the first half, but we got ourselves together at halftime. We put our heart and soul out here and that is how you respect the people we lost.\u201d<\/p>\n