Kingsway can't defend sectional title, falls to Toms River North in championship game
TOMS RIVER – This wasn’t the way Nate Maiers envisioned his senior season ending.
The quarterback for the Kingsway Regional High School football team was hoping that the final game of his high school career would be a victory. Unfortunately, the Dragons were defeated 48-14 by Toms River North on Friday night in the South Jersey Group 5 championship.
“Playing football for Kingsway has been the best four years of my life,” Maiers said. “This is the last game and it stings. This is a really tough loss. The last couple times we played them, we’ve been able to beat them, but they were just the better team tonight.”
While Maiers was a leader for the Dragons on the field, he said that some of his favorite memories playing football for Kingsway came away from the gridiron.
“I’ll never forget the bonds I made with these guys,” he said. “Every day, we show up and we’re always joking around. We put cones on top of each other’s cars in the parking lot and just mess around with each other. I’ll never forget these guys.”
More:HS football: Scores, schedule for the 2022 season
Maiers was responsible for one of his team’s two touchdowns on Friday night, scoring on a 5-yard run early in the second quarter. Darrell Brown Jr. scored the Dragons’ other touchdown midway through the fourth quarter on a 7-yard jet sweep.
“This is my senior year and this is a really tough loss,” Brown said. “Nate and I have been playing football together for four years and this really hurts. Nate is the best teammate I had over these past four years.”
Friday night’s matchup was a rematch of last season’s South Jersey Group 5 final, when Maiers threw a game-winning touchdown with seven seconds left to help his team capture the sectional title.
“Nate is a special kid, a great leader and extremely reliable and dependable,” Kingsway head coach Mark Hendricks said. “He’s made a tremendous amount of improvement from a year ago and that’s the thing about this senior group. They work their butts off and they’re very intelligent.”
For Toms River North, Friday night’s game was all about getting some payback.
“We all wanted this win pretty bad,” Toms River head coach Dave Oizerowitz said. “We’ve had a picture of the scoreboard from last year’s game hanging up in our locker room all season and we wanted them. When we saw the bracket, we were hoping they’d win out and we just had to do our part. Our practices were lights out this week and we were confident that we could win this time around, but give them credit because they fought until the bitter end.”
North quarterback Micah Ford had three rushing touchdowns and also returned a pick-six on defense. Mariners tailback Josh Moore had two rushing touchdowns and defensive back Tareq Council returned an interception 90 yards to the house just 10 seconds before halftime.
“My hats off to Toms River North and just how they go about physically playing the game of football,” Hendricks said. “We’re just really going to miss Nate Maiers and Darrell Brown. They’ve been such a good two-man tandem for us and they’ve made a lot of plays for us to get us to this point. I’m going to miss the heck out of them, but I’m also excited about our young guys in the future.”
Three things we learned
Toms River North is the real deal. There was some speculation that the Mariners might not be battle-tested because of their strength of schedule, but make no mistake, they can do it all. From the size of their offensive line to the number of weapons they have on both sides of the ball, they’ll be a tough team for anyone to take down moving forward. They’re 12-0 and sectional champs for a reason.
Roman Kuzmick is a ball hawk. The Kingsway senior managed to intercept Ford early in the third quarter. It was a moment when the game wasn’t quite out of reach yet, and had the potential to swing the momentum back into Kingsway’s favor. It was just Ford’s second interception thrown this season.
Nate Maiers and Darrell Brown will be missed. The senior duo was the heart and soul of Kingsway. They both contributed to a sectional championship a year ago and were a huge reason why the Dragons got back to this spot again this year. Kingsway has some young up-and-coming talent, but they’re going to miss their senior leaders.
Game balls
Micah Ford, Toms River North, QB/DB: The junior had three rushing touchdowns and also had a pick-six on defense. Three of his scores came in the first quarter to give the Mariners an early 21-0 lead.
Tareq Council, Toms River North, WR/DB: The junior had the play of the game 10 seconds before halftime on a 90-yard interception returned for a touchdown. At the time, Kingsway was down 21-7 and driving. It could have been a completely different game had the Dragons went into the break down 21-14, but instead, they trailed 27-7 at the midway point.
Nate Maiers, Kingsway, QB: The senior had the Dragons’ first rushing touchdown of the game on a 5-yard score in the second quarter.
Darrell Brown Jr., Kingsway, RB/WR: Brown scored Kingsway’s final touchdown of the season on a 7-yard run midway through the fourth quarter.
They said it
Darrell Brown, Kingsway, RB/WR: "On my touchdown run, we just put that play in like three weeks ago and we’ve never lost yardage on the play. We’ve always gained four, five or six yards on it so I had a feeling that I was going to end up in the end zone."
Dave Oizerowitz, Toms River North, head coach: "They’ve had our number and they’ve beat us the last three times we played them. Tareq’s interception was a big momentum shift, we were just trying to hold them to a field goal and then he jumped the route and he was gone. That was an important part of the game."
Mark Hendricks, Kingsway, head coach: "We had our ups and downs this season, but we get the most out of our kids and I think that’s a tribute to our players and the coaching staff. These kids know what they do well and we try to fit in a scheme that allows them to maximize their own potential. It’s worked out for us in some circumstances this year and we’ve had our games where we haven’t quite finished it off. I think the game just got away from us a little bit early tonight. Our goal when we started the year was to play for a championship and we just fell a little short."
This article originally appeared on Cherry Hill Courier-Post: Kingsway football falls in sectional title game to Toms River North
