Raiders Improve Despite Loss to Westfield

The game with rival Westfield Saturday afternoon started off the right way for Scotch Plains-Fanwood High's football team.

Mike Burke's game-opening squib kick was recovered by Will Bryant at the Westfield 35-yard line. But four plays would result in only five yards, a telltale sign of what was to come.

The Raiders lost their fifth straight game — a 30-6 setback to Westfield, dropping their record to 1-5. The Raiders did avoid getting shutout for the third straight time and the fourth time this season when junior running back Quinton Blackwell scored with 7:25 left in the game. Ciccotelli said it was important to score, but also it was important to have run the play right, something the team didn't do the first two times it was run.

"I played hard today, when we were down I tried to get the team up, tried to motivate us to score,'' said Blackwell, who score on a fourth-down play. "It was important to score because getting shutout three weeks in a row isn't fun. We just tried to get better."

Raider head coach Steve Ciccotelli did see some good things — improvement — among his players. He told them that in a post-game meeting in the high school main gymnasium. After all, the Raiders' last two losses had been to teams with a combined record of 9-2. 

Next week, the team will take on 5-0 Summit. The teams the Raiders have lost to have a combined 18-9 record.

It's been a brutal stretch.

"We threw the ball three times; I thought we had a chance,'' said Ciccotelli of the sequence after the recovered opening kick. "But I thought we played hard and did a lot of good things, just not enough of them. I thought you look at it — it might sound crazy after losing 30-6, but I thought we got better today."

The Raiders had only four rushing yards in the first half. But they didn't turn the ball over. A 55-yard punt by Westfield senior Pat Gray put the Raiders on their own 2-yard line in the second quarter. On the first play, senior quarterback Gary Binkiewicz threw the ball away from the end zone. But officials called him for intentionally grounding, an automatic safety.

The Raiders trailed 16-0 at the half, gave up a Westfield touchdown on the Blue Devils' first drive of the second half and trailed 23-0.

"It's frustrating for people to understand, our kids played hard and I wouldn't 
trade this team for any team," Ciccotelli said. "We've played some teams that were just better."