Lawrence High quarterback Nick Falkenberg looks for the open pass at the state title game Dec. 7, 2013, against Hopewell. Lawrence lost, 31-14. (Photo by Albert Rende.)
Remarkable season for Lawrence High football stops short of state win
When it comes to the Lawrence High football team, the world will always look back on 2013 as the greatest season in school history up to this point.
But that wasn’t quite enough for the Cardinals on the night of Dec. 7.
After winning its first 10 games, Lawrence finally met its match when Hopewell Valley rallied for a 31-14 victory in the NJSIAA Central Jersey Group III championship game at The College of New Jersey.
“They played harder than us in the second half,” said star running back Semei Mitchell, who was hindered by a sore hip after halftime. “We came out and played hard in the first half. We just didn’t finish four quarters. That’s what we normally do and we didn’t do it.”
Head coach Rob Radice said the way the season ended was still something to be proud of. In fact, it will be his final moment at the helm of the Cardinals.
Radice resigned Dec. 19 after 24 years on the Lawrence coaching staff, including the last 14 as head coach.
“I know how hard he works and how much effort he put into football, and it’s understandable…He gave so much to this program,” said Lawrence athletic director Ken Mason. “Even though they got to the final this year, it’s about how hard he works even when they won two games. He does everything for these kids. That’s hard to come by in coaches. That’ll be missed.”
And while Radice wasn’t completely savoring the season all that much moments after the game, he will. They all will.
“We had a great season, we’re not ashamed of anything,” he said. “They were the better team. They beat us, they deserve it.”
As Mason noted, “I told Rob, in a couple weeks they will start to realize what they did.”
What they did was play in the biggest football game in Mercer County history. The first sectional final ever between two county teams, played in front of a packed house at The College of New Jersey. It was a banner night for Mercer football.
“I was the AD at Hamilton when they went to the sectional finals, and that was nothing like this,” Mason said. “This was unbelievable.”
And while the players love when these games are at Rutgers, the smaller venue at TCNJ made it that much more electric as both stands were packed and people lined the entire field behind the fences. That same 8,000 people wouldn’t have been quite so imposing at RU.
It looked like a happening, and it was.
“People drove down from Connecticut for that game who went to Lawrence,” Mason said. “I saw some people I hadn’t seen in 10 or 15 years. To me, that’s what it’s about.
“It’s about the whole school, to get more kids in football uniforms in the future. It’s about getting kids involved in sports, seeing how successful they can be if they put in the hard work like the coaches and players did this year.”
In looking back on the year, the honors were many for Lawrence, highlighted by Mitchell being named the 12th Man TD Club’s Co-Player of the Year with Nottingham’s Saquan Hampton.
Mitchell rushed for well over 1,000 yards and was also a standout defensive back, as most of the Cardinals had to play both ways.
“We had no depth,” Radice said. “There was zero depth. But we’re just gonna move forward.”
Things started well for the Cardinals, as Cameren Kitchen fell on a loose ball in the endzone after a high snap on a Hopewell punt attempt.
With David Kowal and Oliver Payen making big defensive plays later in the half, it forced a HoVal punt and gave Lawrence good field position at the Bulldogs 48. An eight-play drive ended with quarterback Nick Falkenberg going over the top from one-yard out to make it 14-0 at the start of the second quarter.
Hopewell stopped making mistakes, however, and closed the gap to 14-12 on a touchdown pass with no time left in the half. Mitchell made a great play to stop quarterback Austin Fellows a foot short of the goal line on the two-point conversion to keep Hopewell in the league, but evidently aggravated a hip that Mason said seemed to be bothering him during the week at practice.
“He’s never going to say anything though,” Mason said.
Radice said after the game that Mitchell did not say a word, but he could tell his big gun was not right. Mitchell had just three carries in the second half, and he and Kitchen were limited to a total of 98 rushing yards.
With the ground game stifled and Falkenberg forced to throw, Hopewell teed off and finished with seven sacks.
“It comes down to the war in the trenches and I don’t think we got that done today,” Radice said. “It is what it is. It happens.
“At halftime, we still led 14-12. I felt if we could get a stop and establish some kind of running game we could kind of get the momentum shift back. But they were very good at stopping our early down runs, our first and second down runs. They kind of put us in a bad situation.”
With Lawrence’s offense shut down after halftime, Hopewell’s defense tacked on three more touchdowns to end up with 31 unanswered points.
Despite their success, the Bulldogs had praise for the Cardinals.
“Nick’s a great quarterback,” Hoval QB Austin Fellows said. “He deserves a lot of credit. Semei Mitchell is a great running back with a great future. He’s gonna go somewhere big. And the same with Cameren Kitchen. He’s gonna go somewhere big.
“The whole Lawrence team came on strong. They play physical and gave us a run for the money. They knocked me on my butt a couple times. I don’t know how I got up, but they’re a real physical team and well coached. Coach Radice is a great coach, it was his first time winning a playoff game, and look how far he went.”
One guy who really felt sympathy for Radice was his buddy Dave Caldwell, the Hopewell Valley head coach. Radice lives in HoVal and he and Caldwell have a good relationship.
“It’s bittersweet,” Caldwell said. “I wish he could get the win and I could get the win. He’s a great guy, he’s a great coach and I know he means so much to those kids over there and those kids really believe in him, and his staff. They carried themselves in a classy way all game.”
That class continued after the game, as Falkenberg and Fellows commiserated, while guys like Jordan Fleming and Kowal mingled and struck up conversations with their former Pop Warner teammates.
It was a group of players who represented their school in the finest fashion.
“These guys handled everything pretty well,” Mason said. “There were articles on them every day for two weeks, that’s not easy for a 17-year-old kid to deal with. My principal (Dr. Jonathan Dauber) talked to them during the week and told them what a presence they’ve been. It was fun to watch them carry themselves. They did a good job.”
They did a great job in turning things around from a disappointing 2012. The Cardinals were coming off a 5-5 season and even when they made the playoffs this year, people doubted them due to a long losing streak in the first round of the states.
“Nobody really expected us to come that far, except our parents,” Mitchell said. “After coming off a 5-5 season we’ve been preparing for this. We made it this far. We knew we could do this. We just didn’t really get the outcome we wanted.”
Even in the immediate wake of defeat, Radice understood just how special this team was.
“Just the fact these guys came around from 5-5 to 10-1, and we made it to the state finals, that’s great,” the coach said. “There’s a lot of good things to look at there. We got the most wins in a season, all that stuff, and we’re very grateful for it.
Radice added that the loss won’t define who the Cardinals are. What will define them are players like Falkenberg, Kitchen, Mitchell and a slew of others.
“We would not be here without any of those guys,” Radice said. “Maybe they didn’t have the night they wanted to have tonight. But we would definitely not have been here without them tonight. “
And even though the Cards came up short, they will eventually realize that “here” was a pretty good place to be.
A place no Lawrence team had ever been before.
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