After leading most of the game, the JV football team needed a big stop in the 4th quarter. Forest Hills Northern led by a point with five minutes to go, and all they needed was a long drive to salt the game away.
After coming through on downs 1 through 3, the Ranger defense needed a stop on 4th and 1 to not only get the ball back deep in enemy territory but to shift momentum in their favor drastically. That’s exactly what they did. Lady Luck shone on the Rangers as a low, mishandled snap forced Northern quarterback Cas Anderson to protect the ball, turning it over one way or the other. A minute later, sophomore Ranger quarterback Nick Williams ran it into the endzone to put the Rangers on top for good, 35-28
FHC led for most of the first half, courtesy of two touchdowns from sophomore running back Joey Vanderveen and a punt return touchdown from freshman Carson Schick. By halftime, however, Northern had stormed back to cut the Ranger lead to 1, making the score 21-20 at the break.
Head coach Tony Sultini recognized the issues that the team experienced that led to the game getting tighter.
“Our running game was actually working in the first quarter,” Sultini said. “Then we got two scores up, and we got overconfident. I had to play bad cop, and Coach [Jared] Ropp had to play good cop in the locker room. Sometimes you need that.”
Overconfidence seemed to be the theme of the game and the team’s outlook on it, especially given Northern’s track record, as Sultini pointed out.
“Our guys got overconfident seeing that Northern got waxed last week by Byron Center,” Sultini said. “The whole message this week was, ‘Don’t let one game dictate which opponent we’re going to see.’ We kept saying Northern was going to be better than what we saw on film.”
Vanderveen was a key contributor to the Rangers’ success early on, breaking off a 40-yard run on the opening drive and then punching it in from three yards out not long after. He added a 12-yard touchdown reception in the second quarter to add to his stat line.
Vanderveen was proud of the team’s fight and resiliency during the game.
“It feels great [to beat FHN],” Vanderveen said. ” We just had to keep our foot on the gas. We got down there for a second, but we didn’t hang our heads, and we took the W. It feels good.”
After a slow start to the second half, Williams took over the game, running for two scores in the final two quarters and adding a two-point conversion to cap off his very strong finish to the game.
The Rangers take on Byron Center next week, seemingly a tall task given how Byron Center handled FHN a week ago. Lineman Jonathan Van Houten is prepared for the challenge.
“We need to lock in during practice,” Van Houten said. “We have to go one hundred percent every single play and learn our plays. This week, practice wasn’t as good, and the score showed it, but we’ll do better next week.”
There’s been a big difference between the JV and freshman teams this year, and that’s the point differential. The freshman team has played in close, tightly contested games, and JV has won in blowouts every time. Sultini realizes that this is something the team can use as motivation going forward.
“We’ve been in a dogfight now,” Sultini said. “We have to grind it out. We can’t get frustrated; we can’t get down. We have to grind it out.”
For the team, there’s also lots of room for improvement. Sultini is ready to fix those up and prepare the team for what’s ahead.
“We’ve got to make sure we block the right guys,” Sultini said. “On certain plays, we’re not supposed to block the guy that helps out the play. We’re blocking those people. We’ve got to go back to basics and do those. We can’t do the big things until we do the small things.”
