It was just three years ago that the Scotch Plains-Fanwood High School football team played Colonia in the first round of the state playoffs. But for the current seniors it must seem like decades. On that cold and raw Saturday, the Raiders, playing in the playoffs for the fifth time in six years, withstood a ferocious performance by Erik LeGrand to hold on for a 16-14 victory and advance to a second straight home game against South Plainfield. Freshmen Kyle Berwick, Quinton Blackwell, Neville Hall and Mike Tufaro stood proudly on the sidelines that day awaiting the future when they would take over and continue the success of Steve Ciccotelli's program. But the Raiders would fall the following week in gut-wrenching fashion, 19-17, to South Plainfield, and in the past three seasons, have lost 24 of their last 30 games. The regression has been consistent from three wins in 2008, to two last year and just one this season.
Although the Raiders were able to crush Millburn 38-12 in their final game on Friday, Nov. 12, what could and, perhaps, should have been a memorable senior season had ended in a nightmare. And nobody has borne the brunt more than the captains and Ciccotelli. When asked for something positive he could take from this season Ciccotelli paused.
"Seasons like this test the character of everybody," he said. "You find out who your true friends are. You find out who the true leaders are. It has been a very rough season to say the least. I have not had a good full night of sleep in a long time. I get three or four hours and I wake up and play over the games and think about how I could have coached better."
He added, "Nothing has made me feel worse than what our captains have gone through. They are all fine football players and great young men and deserve much better."
Unlike college athletes, who are often separated from the general student population, high school athletes spend the entire week with their fellow classmates. "A lot of people were looking down on us," Berwick, now a captain, said. "They don't understand. Kids that used to play football and have quit have asked me why I am still playing."
But for Berwick , whether to continue playing was not even a question. A linebacker, he played through injuries to become the team's leading tackler, and he played the team's final game Friday despite injuries to both ankles. "It's my last game as a high school player," he said two days before the game. "I have nothing to hold back for."
For Berwick and the other seniors, the losses this season were particularly painful. "The last few years we could always say we're going to come back next week, next year, but we can't say that anymore," he said.
Compounding that were their expectations. "We were expecting, going into the season, to do a lot better than last season," Hall, also a captain, said. "We had a lot more talent, a lot more senior leadership, a lot more experience this year."
Blackwell, a captain, put it more bluntly. "We all thought we would make the playoffs and get to the state championships," he said.
For Ciccotelli, whose teams had consistently played mistake-free football, the reasons for this season's disappointment are easy to pinpoint. "We just made way too many mistakes this season," he said. "We played most of our opponents pretty equally but we usually turned the ball over too much and that will kill you."
Tufaro, another captain, echoed Ciccotelli's comments. "We had too many personal fouls, turnovers and mistakes," he said.
During the offseason, Ciccotelli said that he and the coaches will "examine what we did because our message didn't get through." He added, "A lot of people have told me that I can't coach anymore and that I should quit, but that is not me."
Tufaro strongly agreed. "There's no one to blame," he said. "It's the team."
The challenges of this season, however, have had one upside for the seniors: as teammates and classmates abandoned the team, the upperclassmen stuck together and, as a result, became closer. "Hanging out with your friends on the team has helped us all get through this," Tufaro said. "This was definitely the closest senior class in years."
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