RallyNorth.net

Sat, Oct 21, 2006 01:00 PM @ Bishop Fenwick

Team	Final
Arlington Catholic	48
Bishop Fenwick	26

Crusaders need to regroup after loss to AC

Friday, August, 24 By Matt Jenkins
Staff writer

PEABODY | Two-thousand yards guarantees you glory, individual awards and a tired set of legs.

What it doesn't guarantee you is a championship.

Bobby Tarr, Bishop Fenwick's talented junior running back, continued his pursuit of the rare high school achievement of 2,000 rushing yards with his fourth straight 200-yard game. But this time it came in a crushing 48-26 loss to Catholic Central League rival Arlington Catholic at Donaldson Field. Tarr may very well get to breathe the rarefied air of a 2,000-yard season, but the truth is the Crusaders would probably be better off if he didn't.

Fenwick (5-2, 0-1 CCL) turned the ball over four times in the first half on Saturday, with each mistake leading to Arlington Catholic touchdowns. Handing the ball over to your opponent repeatedly throughout a contest (six total turnovers) is not a solid recipe for success, but with or without the turnovers, the Cougars seemed to expose some of the Crusaders' flaws.

The strength of Fenwick is offense, more specifically the straight-ahead running style of Tarr behind that big, physical offensive line. The goal of any high school coach should be to play to his team's strengths, thus providing the team with the best possible chance to win. Now, there isn't a football coaching staff on the North Shore that plays to its strengths better than Dave Woods and his staff. Still, this may be a case of relying on one player just a little too much.

"I think what's happened is Bobby has run the ball so successful the last four or five weeks that we haven't had to do anything else," Woods said. "Every day at practice we work on all these other things and we haven't had the need to use them in a game yet."

The need arose very early on Saturday and it seemed as if the Crusaders weren't ready.

Fumbles on three straight possessions | after Tarr put Fenwick up 7-0 with a 50-yard TD sprint | put the Crusaders in a two-touchdown hole in the first quarter. Another fumble before halftime | after Tarr and AC's Jonathan Jean-Louis swapped scoring runs | allowed the Cougars to go ahead, 34-13, at intermission.

Making up 21 points in 22 minutes with a run-oriented offense is not an easy obstacle to overcome. It's even more difficult when you ask your defense to stop a well-balanced offense in the process.

And that's where the difference was between these two teams. While Arlington Catholic (5-1, 2-0 CCL) was spreading the ball around with seven different rushers and four different receivers, Fenwick was plugging away with one main offensive threat.

Arlington Catholic had 152 yards rushing and 164 passing for 316 total yards | surely a number that would have been higher if the Cougars weren't given a short field on so many occasions.

"We have a lot of athletes all over the place," Arlington Catholic coach Serge Clivio said. "If you want to cover one, there's another (to make a play)."

There's no guesswork when preparing a defense for Tarr and the Crusaders.

This season Tarr has accounted for 81 percent of the Fenwick rushing offense and 70 percent of the team's yards from scrimmage. He has four straight 200-yard games and five in seven starts.

His 32 carries Saturday were a career high and it hardly seems like a coincidence that he has accumulated his three heaviest workloads in the only three games Fenwick was trailing at halftime. Tarr had 26 carries against Newton South (trailing 12-3 at the break) and Salem (a 14-6 halftime deficit).

"When you have a great runner like Bobby, your first goal is to stop him. And doesn't he go and break one (on the first drive)," Clivio said. "We put a little bit of a shadow over him with Jonathan (Jean-Louis) a couple times and that really helped to slow him down. Jonathan got a couple of good licks at him and that helped a little bit."

It's hard to imagine a coach thinking his team did a good job of "slowing down" a runner who just rolled out over 200 yards, but Clivio was right. Tarr reached the 200-yard mark but had to work extremely hard to get there. And with every additional carry, Tarr took another hit or two.

Now it's time for the Crusaders to make sure they don't take another hit in the CCL standings.

"These guys still have to play Spellman and Williams," Woods said, looking at the bright side. "The first thing we have to do is figure out a way to beat St. Mary's (Saturday)."