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October 6, 2004

Great start to CAL football season

By TOM WILLIAMS
Sports Columnist


Only four weeks of high school football have passed (three for some teams) and already the 2004 Cape-Atlantic League season has shown excitement and promise.

Consider some of these developments:

Atlantic City has shut out three straight opponents and now plays Egg Harbor Township, a team with which it shares first place in the American Conference.

Mainland’s Matt Flynn has already thrown the ball over 100 times for more than 700 yards and 12 touchdowns, decent season totals for many quarterbacks.

Holy Spirit handed St. Joseph a rare defeat in the National Conference in a game where second-year coach Bill Walsh went for the first down, 4th and one on his own 12. And his Spartans got it.

Absegami kicker Cody Sawhill has kicked three field goals, two of them 40 yards or longer. Sawhill’s 46-yarder was a school record and the ninth longest in CAL history. A former soccer player, this is the first year as a football kicker for the senior.

Ocean City and Mainland both entered their annual rivalry game with losing records. Then they delivered the highest scoring game in the rivalry’s history and one of the most exciting.

Two of the CAL’s top 10 rushers are juniors – Egg Harbor Township’s Pierre Reid and St. Joe’s Jack Corcoran – and another, Matt Szczur of Lower Cape May, is a sophomore.

The CAL’s top four quarterbacks in passing efficiency and seven of the top eight are juniors, meaning we can probably expect the ball to be in the air even more next season. That likelihood is increased when you see that the top three CAL receivers and four of the top five are juniors.

There are three teams in the National Conference and four or five in the American Conference with a legitimate shot at winning the title.

The National Conference teams can pound their chest with Hammonton beating EHT, St. Joe over Absegami and Bridgeton over Ocean City. And, the way things are developing at this point in the season, the Atlantic City-Holy Spirit game may become the biggest Thanksgiving game in a long time.

There is a new school and new lights in Ocean City and a new press box at Mainland.

When you consider how many CAL teams are strong contenders for playoffs positions right now, it is likely that the next four or five weeks might bring even more excitement than the first four.

And that would really be great.



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