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Georgetown turns the tables on Whittier

Saturday, September, 29 By Bob Albright
Staff writer

HAVERHILL | The raucous blue and white celebration at midfield at the conclusion of yesterday's Whittier Tech-Georgetown football game was befitting of the kind of outbursts you might see after a Thanksgiving game or a December playoff contest.

But given the fact that a skeleton squad of 32 Royals had just knocked off a Commonwealth Large powerhouse which had virtually owned them for quite some time no one was begrudging the Georgetown players a few extra minutes to fully drink in their impressive 33-16 win.

"This ranks No.2 ," said a beaming Nadjee Harrigan of Georgetown when asked of where the win ranked. "No. 1 is going to be a Super Bowl victory."

Judging from yesterday's complete team performance by the Royals that might not just be idle chatter. After watching Whittier jump out to an early 8-0 advantage on Bryan Trickett's 75-yard scamper on the second play of the game, the Royals (2-1) simply took over reeling off 27 unanswered points.

Harrigan, a senior school choice student from Lawrence, authored the game's biggest play. After Joe Esposito's 3-yard TD run had put the Royals up with just 11 ticks of the clock left in the first half, Harrigan went all out on the ensuing kickoff and scooped up a fumble at the Whittier 15 and rumbled into the end zone with no time remaining. The momentum shift was obvious as it sent the Royals into the locker room sky high and left Whittier (1-3) to chew over a 21-point halftime deficit instead of a 14-point difference.

"That's going to be burned in my head forever," said Georgetown's second-year coach Matt Bouchard. "That image of 11 seconds to go in the half. I've been on teams that I have coached where with 11 seconds the team is already in the locker room, but they wanted to go down there and make a play and that was a big time play."

Coming off a bye, the secret to the Royal's success was three-fold. First, there was the dominant day running the option from quarterback Joe Esposito (2 TD rushes) and backs Brandon Wade (9 rushes, 64 yards, TD) and Dave Kenneally (10 rushes, 66 yards, TD).

Secondly, there was a smothering team effort on defense spearheaded by sophomore middle linebacker Chris Esposito which stuffed the Wildcats on all four of their fourth down conversion attempts.

Finally, there was the Royals' special teams play which came up with not only the Harrigan score, but kept Whittier staring at the long end of the field all day behind the legs of kicker Joe Esposito and punter Anthony Conte. The end result was clearly one of the most satisfying wins for Bouchard in his time with the Royals | not just for how well his team played, but who it beat.

"Just with the amount of respect that I have for (Whittier Tech head coach Kevin Bradley) to be able to come in here and pull away not by a little, but a large margin, it's a big deal," said Bouchard. "It's a huge win for us."

It was a costly loss for Whittier which lost running back Matt Miles to what was feared to be a broken leg early in the contest. The senior who is also a standout wrestler and the school record holder in the 200 meters was taken to Merrimack Valley Hospital in Haverhill.

"He's a very tough player and was a die-hard guy on our team," said Bradley. "Georgetown did a really fine job and they should be happy. We just have to get better. We have a lot of sophomores out there and it shows … When we had that Super Bowl team and when those guys were sophomores it was the same thing. It's just growing pains. But we saw some good things from some young kids out there that we can build on."

Georgetown host perhaps the team to beat in the Commonwealth Large, Shawsheen Tech, this Saturday, while Whittier has Chelsea.