Lwt. Football claims share of ELFL title

Coach Bill Wagner's clothes were just beginning to dry from the late-game Gatorade shower when champagne doused the Penn lightweight football team. As improbable as it seemed at the beginning of the season, the Quakers won a share of the Eastern Lightweight Football League title for the first time since 1940. The fact that they closed the season on Franklin Field Saturday afternoon with an impressive 46-14 drubbing of Princeton was icing on the cake. "When this year started out, no one expected us to do anything, but we turned it all around," Wagner said. The Quakers were motivated before the game by Army's 34-7 Friday night upset of Navy, the only team to defeat Penn this year, which left the door open for a shot at a three-way tie with both service academies for the league title. Also, it was rumored that long-time Penn defensive line coach Tony DiPietro would make this Princeton game his last. Penn's swarming defense rode the emotional lift from onto the field. Not even two minutes into the game, Tigers quarterback Richard Barnett was stripped of the football by sophomore defensive end Carter Byrnes. The loose ball was fallen on in the end zone by defensive tackle Jordan Matusow. The extra point by Dan Malasky got the Quakers off to a 7-0 start. "I was happy to do my line coach proud and send him off with a big win," Quakers nose guard Cameron Reilly said. In what was to become a theme of the game, after the Penn defense stopped Princeton, the Penn offense scored on a well-executed drive. The first score by the Quakers offense, just minutes after the Matusow score, was capped off when freshman Tim Ortman, behind the right side of Penn's offensive line, broke free from a Tigers defender on his way to a 45-yard rumble for six points. "We went into the game saying we were going to dominate the game and be the difference, and we stuck it to them," Penn guard Howard Goldberg said. Extrapolation of Penn's scoring pace predicted the Quakers were on their way to 168 points in a shutout win over the Tigers, but the Princeton offense was able to get six points of its own one minute after Penn's score when running back A.J. Ortega slipped through the Quakers defense for a 72-yard score. A missed extra point left Penn ahead, 14-6. Princeton got its final score of the game near the end of the first quarter on an uncharacteristic mishap in the Penn secondary. Barnett's high-arcing pass settled into the hands of the Tigers' Joe Hughes when a Quakers defensive back misjudged the ball's trajectory. The rest of the game was an exercise in futility for the Tigers, except for a few Penn mistakes. Two Ortman fumbles and a penalty which brought back an 85-yard punt return by Schmidt slowed the Quakers down momentarily in the second quarter. Following those problems, Wagner, normally a conservative play-caller, opened up Penn's offense. Veneri hit Schmidt on a 33-yard pass that moved the Quakers into range for a trick play which they had worked on all week. On the play, Veneri faked a reverse, literally stopped for a moment to shield the ball behind his back from the defense, then uncoiled a perfect 28-yard scoring strike to freshman wide-out David Chu. "You couldn't have drawn it up any better," Veneri said. The game ended for all intensive purposes just before halftime, when Princeton's Jared Ruger screamed: "They're not going to do this to us." Seconds later, he and a Tigers cornerback were beat for a 31-yard touchdown on a pass from Veneri to Schmidt. "We talked about Coach Wagner before the game. We wanted to do it for him," Schmidt said. "We look up to him more than he knows." The offense, which rang up 446 yards of total offense, was unstoppable behind another strong showing by the offensive line. Ortman ran for 145 yards on 21 carries, while ailing sophomore Greg Grabon finished with 81 yards on 16 carries. Veneri saved his best game of the season for his last; he was 6-of-8 for 148 yards and two touchdowns. Schmidt, continuing an MVP-caliber season, finished with 105 yards receiving on four catches. Defensively, the Quakers recovered five turnovers -- two interceptions and three fumbles -- on their way to limiting the Tigers to 200 total yards of offense. "We just had guys who were stepping up all year," Penn defensive coordinator John Amendt said. "We felt very good finishing the season with a win over Princeton," Wagner said. "We knew the window was open [for the ELFL title], and we couldn't let this slip. Everything we did before this would have been meaningless."