Bridgewater-Raritan High School’s football team dominated  to post its sixth victory of the season—all on its home turf at Basilone Memorial Field–when it defeated Westfield High School,28-7, on Friday, October 17.

The final game of the regular season will be held this Friday.October 24, at Phillipsburg High School. The state sectional playoffs will begin the weekend of  October 31-November 1.

In this six–game stretch, Bridgewater-Raritan won each game by an average margin of victory of 14.6 points. 

The Panthers are poised to continue this unbeaten streak at home when they begin their state playoff run in the North Jersy, Section 2, Group 5 state playoffs as one of the top seeeds.

However, Bridgewater-Raritan still needed to complete the task at hand against Westfield, as it sought to rebound from its 30-18 loss to Hillsborough High School on Friday, October 10, in Hillsborough.

In a similar manner to their last loss against Ridge High School on October 3, Bridgewater-Raritan could get little going on offense against Hillsborough, with the only difference being that Declan Kurdyla was back under center for the Panthers. 

Kurdyla had missed the previous three games with a knee injury, and, following a single snap from sophomore backup Evan Woodring, entered the game at quarterback for the Panthers for the remainder of the game. However, Hillsborough was ready for this switch, as it continually sent pressure towards the mobility-impaired Kurdyla, who was sacked three  times in the loss. 

During the week of practice leading up to this week’s game, Coach DJ Catalano stressed to Kurdyla to be himself and to continue to lean into his tendencies despite how they were exploited the week before.

As a result, this past week turned out to be a different story for Kurdyla, who managed to extend several plays with his legs, carrying the ball 14 times for 112 yards and a touchdown against Westfield. 

Westfield entered the game with momentum after taking down North Brunswick 35-6 the week before, looking to prove that they were still a dangerous team despite being 3-4. The Panthers also had a similar chip on their shoulder against the Blue Devils after being dismantled by the Union Couty team last year, 35-10. 

In fact, Westfield has long been a thorn  in the side against Bridgewater-Rartian. Since the 2014 state playoffs, Westfield has defeated Bridgewater-Raritan six times, including in the state sectionl championship game in 2015, 2016and 2017.

Bridgewater-Raritan won the coin toss and elected to receive, an aggressive move by Coach Catalano that we have seen in every game so far this year. The Panthers have started out every game this year with the ball through either winning the toss or having the ball deferred to them. 

In a brief conversation following the game, Catalano explained his preference to receive the ball when winning the coin toss, saying that the first possession is a supplement to how his team plays with momentum. He believes that getting the ball first and scoring sets the tone for the game, and forces the opposing team to throw the ball out of a slight sense of panic. 

The Panthers opened up their drive prioritizing their highly-producing rushing attack with  running backs Jahmier Black and Denzel Amoafo, each of whom rushed for over 90 yards in the game. This approach looked promising, as Bridgewater-Raritan chewed the clock all the way down the field before a fumble deep in Wesstfield territory gave the visitor the ball.

Even still, the Bridgewater-Raritan defense was sure to prevent Westfield from capitalizing on this mistake, forcing a three and out.

Westfield caught yet another break  on a  muffed punt, giving the ball right back to the Blue Devils. They then entered Panther territory on a stretch of good runs, but stalled out shortly thereafter and punted it away. 

The Westfield punt pinned the Bridgewater-Raritan inside their own five-yard line for their second drive in waning moments of the first quarter. The Panthers were unable to dig themselves out of their own half of the field, and punted it away to begin the second quarter. 

However, the stretch of entertaining punts and special teams errors continued to the detriment of the Panthers, as Westfield’s Luke Spaide returned Joe Squicciarini’s kick 30 yards to the the end zone lowering his shoulder to win the race to the pylon against the punter. 

The Westfield offense had done absolutely nothing in the game so far to indicate that they were capable of producing a scoring drive. 

So Bridgewater-Raritan began its attack on offense.

Kurdyla found Mikey Bratus on a screen pass that he took 30 yards downfield and into Westfield territory. In spite of the big gain, the play was called back due to a block in the back, setting the Panthers back 10 yards. 

The Panthers were able to meet this setback with resiliency, as Kurdyla found Black over the middle for a large chunk of yards.  Amoafo did the rest of the work, punching in a run from 15 yards out to tie the game up at 7-7.

This touchdown proved to be all that Bridgewater-Raritan needed to get back into rhythm, as it was the first seven of 28 unanswered points.

Following a few crisp Kurdyla scrambles to set Bridgewater-Raritan up in Blue Devil territory on their next drive, Amoafo ran in his second touchdown of the game from five yards out to give the Panthers a 14-7 lead before halftime. 

Kurdyla and the offense  kicked it into high gear coming out of the break, as the senior quarterback broke off a 49 yard run, the longest of his season, all the way to the end zone to extend the lead to 14 points. 

On the other side, Westfield’s offense was completely thwarted by the Panthers, as both of the Blue Devil quarterbacks combined for a measly 24 yards, and the entire team only produced 116 yards of total offense. 

Bridgewater-Raritan’s final offensive chance came in the fourth quarter, and the ball wound up in the hands of Amoafo, who got into the end-zone for his third  rushing touchdown of the night to cap off a convincing 28-7 victory.