Caper Tigers go for division title Saturday after beating Blue Devils 28-7
HAMMONTON — The Caper Tiger football team hopes to clinch the division at home this Saturday when they host the Oakcrest Falcons. Expect Ryan Mallon to be a key player in that game.
On Saturday, Oct. 17, against the Hammonton Blue Devils, about the only way he didn’t score was kicking a field goal.
Mallon ran for a touchdown, caught a pass for a touchdown and took a handoff from quarterback David Douglass and then passed to teammate Ashton Ray for a touchdown.
For the record, senior Britton Walls kicks for the team; he hit all four extra points after the touchdowns Saturday. However, Mallon also punts and hit a nice one Saturday that pinned the Blue Devils at their own 2-yard line, so there’s that, too.
The senior picked up 135 yards on the day and is fast closing in on a 1,000-yard rushing season. He’s at 965 yards with one regular season game to go.
“Honestly, my team was motivating me, coming in here and doing what we had to do and get to that championship next week,” Mallon said after the game. Of the three touchdowns, he most liked the one in which he threw the ball.
“The passing touchdown was kind of crazy. That was the third one of my career,” he said. “(Douglass) handed it off like a stretch play and then I took two steps, like I was going to run it and stopped. No one was there originally and I had to wait for one of my receivers, Ashton Ray — great receiver, great hands — to get space.”
He credited his teammates for motivating him to come in every day and work hard, “and pushing me to get better.”
Lower Cape May Regional High School’s team took the opening kickoff and started well, but a few bad plays sent them backward and they had to punt. They held the Blue Devils on their own opening drive to force a punt and then it was forward from there to score their first touchdown on the cold, windy field.
Douglass had a nice run from scrimmage to pick up good yardage and then Mallon ran right from the 34-yard line for the team’s first touchdown with three and a half minutes left in the first quarter.
Between a few miscues and Hammonton’s defense, the Caper Tigers’ next drives ended in a missed field goal and a stop when they were knocking on the door for a touchdown from a few yards out.
But that left the Blue Devils stuck. The Caper Tiger defense held. On their third-down-and-long, when Hammonton quarterback Rocco Giacobbe dropped back to pass, Shane Lawler broke through the line, jumped up and swatted the pass back into the end zone.
The ensuing punt, that only went to the 37-yard line, set up LCMR’s next touchdown drive.
Douglass passed to Lawler to get the team moving and a long Mallon run brought the team to the 6-yard line. Setting up what looked like a running play, Mallon took the handoff from Douglass, went right, then threw the ball into the end zone to Ray, who jumped up a caught it for the 14-0 lead with 1:10 left in the first half.
“We’ve been working on it (that pass play) probably for the past year and a half now,” Ray said. “We just haven’t ran it in a game since, I’d say, Haddonfield last year (in the playoffs). And we set it up perfectly. The boys up front blocked it perfectly and it was just wide open.”
Ray added it felt good to beat the Blue Devils. “It’s a really big win for us for Power Points and we hope to just roll the success into the next game.”
In the second half, the Caper Tiger defense put the offense in great position, including using a pair of sacks that stopped another Blue Devil drive.
Starting at Hammonton’s 41-yard line, they quickly move the ball to the 23. From there, Douglass lofted a pass to Mallon, who got behind the defender. Mallon caught it in the air and fell backward into the end zone.
LCMR was up 21-0 with about three minutes left in the third quarter.
The Caper Tigers stopped the next Blue Devil drive cold and got the ball back. From the 44-yard line, Douglass handed off to Jadon Henry, who until that point had just been a menace on defense. Henry got some blocks and broke some tackles, rambling into the end zone for the 28-0 lead.
With time running out and the game firmly in hand in the fourth quarter, the Caper Tiger secondary allowed wide receiver Dylan Bermudez to get behind him. Giacobbe lobbed the pass to Bermudez for the 23-yard touchdown and 28-7 final score.
Caper Tiger head coach Billy Damiana called the victory over Hammonton “a program win for us and what we’re trying to change.”
“Credit to Hammonton. We were scared to death of them on film. They do everything right, and everything is on time,” he said. “We knew we were up against the wall this week and had to be at our best. I don’t think we played our best, partially because Hammonton forced us into some things and maybe because of the weather, but we played close to our best.”
He noted they haven’t beaten the Blue Devils in a while.
“The last time I was here was my freshman year in high school and they smoked us. One of the hardest hits I’ve ever taken was on this field.”
Damiana is the school’s wrestling coach who took over the football program last year. He took the team to the South Jersey Group II semifinals, where they lost to No. 1 seed and eventual sectional champ Haddonfield in the semifinals, but finished with an 8-3 record. The year before, LCMR finished 2-8.
With the opportunity to win the division for the second year in a row, the coach said “this group deserves it. They’ve earned the right to do it, but we can’t just show up and expect for it to happen. We have to show up all week long.”
He said a great week of practice led to the win over Hammonton and that is what will be needed before facing Oakcrest.
The team’s quarterback said he “came in knowing we were going to win, but it meant a lot for the Power Points and for the playoffs because that’s what we’re focused on now and the divisional victory.”
Douglass said it took a lot to beat Hammonton.
“Every week we train like we’re going into war, so we’re always prepared for the games and this is the outcome of us training hard every day,” he said.
LCMR hosts Oakcrest (6-2) at 11 a.m. Saturday, Oct. 24.
– STORY and PHOTOS by DAVID NAHAN/Cape May Star and Wave and Ocean City Sentinel staff
