The high school football season is almost a month old and Hudson Catholic has yet to surrender a single point.
That’s right. The Hawks have posted three straight shutouts against Newark Central (23-0), Glen Ridge (13-0) and Dickinson (42-0).
It’s the first time since 2003 that the Hawks won three straight games without allowing a single point and it’s the first time in the school’s history that they started the season with three straight shutouts.
“You’re always happy when you keep the other team off the board,” Hudson Catholic head coach Lou Zampella said. “But I don’t want to get caught up with shutouts. We have to get better. We’re not perfect. We still have a lot of work to do.”
Still, starting the season off with three shutout wins is quite an achievement.
“It’s a nice accomplishment,” Zampella said. “The hard work is paying off. The kids are running to the ball well and that’s something we preach. Getting the shutouts weren’t even a thought that crossed my mind. Newark Central is a good team that went 7-3 last year. Glen Ridge is a very good team with an explosive offense and a good quarterback [Paddy McDermott] who can throw it all over the place. Sean [Fallon] has done a good with Dickinson. I really didn’t expect this to happen.”
One of the key reasons for the Hawks’ success in the early going has been the play of senior linebacker Steven Harper, who has been playing like the college prospect everyone thought he would be when he was a freshman at Marist.
“He’s playing like a D-I [NCAA Division I] player and playing like one of the best players in our league,” Zampella said. “He’s a special defensive player. He’s also playing offensive tackle for us and that helps the team a great deal. It goes a long way with the rest of his teammates.”
Senior Javeon Ensley may be only 16 years old, but he’s been playing like a man. He’s playing both outside linebacker and strong safety for the Hawks.
“He’s been very physical in the run and in the pass,” Zampella said. “Next to Harper, he’s been our best player.”
Senior defensive end Matt Newsome has also been a force.
“He had a good game against Glen Ridge,” Zampella said of Newsome.
Syhied Simmons, known more for his skills as a running back, has been solid at linebacker. Defensive tackle Masai Coakley-Davis, only a sophomore and playing in only his second year of organized football, has been a stud. Senior Alfredo Vera is another standout at defensive tackle.
Zampella, a former standout defensive back at Hudson Catholic and later St. Peter’s College, then became a defensive coordinator in his early days as an assistant coach, knows a thing or two about defense.
“We definitely take a lot of pride in our defense,” Zampella said. “I’m a defensive guy at heart. There is a lot of pride keeping the opponent off the board.”
Zampella still calls the defensive sets, but gets help from assistant coaches Jonathan Calderon, Jose Yanes, Jonathan Bowman and Jeff Grimm.
“They’ve done a great job with the game plan,” Zampella said of his assistants. “We have good players to be put in the right positions. You need talent to be able to do what we’re doing. We never lose sight of that. We’ll definitely take being 3-0 at this point, but there’s a lot of football left to be played.”
The Hawks take on Marist this weekend with the thought of getting a top seed in next month’s NJSIAA state playoffs. The NJSIAA has combined Non-Public Groups 1 & 2 this year, so it makes the pursuit for possible home games even more imperative.
“It’s 100 percent on our minds,” Zampella said. “We don’t want to spend two and a half hours on a bus to get to a state playoff game. We want to put ourselves in the position to make all those other teams come to Jersey City.”
Which, after all, isn’t a bad place to visit in November…
The North Jersey Interscholastic Conference, which Weehawken and Secaucus both play in, has decided in a 31-6 vote to stay away from the idea of a Super Conference for football and will remain status quo with the league the way it is.
The Hudson County Interscholastic League had already voted to join the Big North, the Northwest Jersey Athletic Conference and the Super Essex Conference in the formation of the Super Conference for football. But the NJIC wanted no part of it.
“I don’t think it was necessarily a vote against the Super Conference, but rather a vote that said we’re satisfied with the way we’re doing things now,” said Secaucus athletic director and head football coach Charlie Voorhees. “So it was more of a vote of confidence that what we’re doing is right. We have a bunch of ADs and football coaches who get along well and have mutual respect across the board.”
“There were a lot of gray areas to it,” said Weehawken AD and football coach Zach Naszimento. “They switched things three times with the formula for crossover [independent] games. We thought in August that it was the final draft. We felt that we weren’t that important to them. We’re doing okay on our own.”
If the vote went through, then Weehawken and Secaucus would have been in a division with Hoboken, but also Shabazz, Weequahic and Glen Ridge.
“We’re a program that’s in survival mode right now,” Naszimento said, referring to dwindling participation numbers. “A lot of the NJIC schools are in the same boat.”…
St. Peter’s Prep wide receiver/linebacker Kolton Huber has decided to take his football talents to the University of Pennsylvania next fall. Huber, who is ranked among the state’s best pass catchers with 21 receptions for 290 yards and two touchdowns thus far, will join older brother Shane as a Division I football player.
Shane Huber, the former Hudson Reporter Defensive Player of the Year when he was also at Prep, is currently a redshirt sophomore at the University of Massachusetts…
Zymire Gordon, who began the season as the starting quarterback for Lincoln, has apparently left the team for no apparent reason. It was believed that Gordon missed last week’s game due to injury, but that was not the case. He had already left the team…
Hudson Reporter High School Football Top Five: 1. St. Peter’s Prep (2-2). 2. Lincoln (3-0). 3. Union City (2-1). 4. Hudson Catholic (3-0). 5. Hoboken (2-1)…
Hudson Reporter High School Soccer Top Five: 1. Union City (8-1). 2. St. Peter’s Prep (7-2). 3. North Bergen (4-5). 4. Memorial (4-5). 5. Dickinson (5-3)…
In closing, something great happened in pro baseball last weekend, as the New York Mets clinched the National League East Division championship for the first time in nine years. As a life-long, diehard Mets fan, it was a celebration for the ages. Now, bring on the Dodgers in the National League Divisional Series later this week. Let’s Go Mets! – Jim Hague
Jim Hague can be reached at OGSMAR@aol.com.