By Greg Tartaglia / NorthJersey.com
For 22 consecutive seasons, St. Mary of Rutherford was a fixture in the NJSIAA football playoffs.
Then longtime coach Mike Sheridan retired in 2016, and although a few postseason appearances followed, the Gaels endured a 4-15 stretch from 2020-22.
Friday night in Wayne, St. Mary returns to the playoffs after a three-year absence. The No. 6 seed in Non-Public B visits defending champion and No. 3 seed DePaul.
The odds are long for the Gaels (6-4). Yet they’ve clinched their first winning season since 2015, and third-year coach Paul Johnsen has them trending in the right direction.
“The last time we were over .500, I was on Coach Sheridan’s staff as an assistant,” Johnsen said Tuesday. “I’ve dealt with a lot of different teams going into the state playoffs. I’ve dealt with teams that didn’t believe they could win when they could have won – they were just intimidated for some reason.
“The first thing is, the kids have got to believe,” he said. “And then we’ve got to play our best game, make sure that we execute our game plan well and see what happens.”
In the midst of the COVID pandemic, the St. Mary roster was down to 17 players. The number is now back up to 30, and rather than having players transfer out, a few have transferred in and become key contributors.
Entering last weekend’s 40-0 win over Albertus Magnus (N.Y.), Gaels running back Nasir Owens already had surpassed 1,000 yards rushing for the season.
“He transferred in from St. Joe’s last year, and he means a ton to the team,” Johnsen said of Owens. “Not only with his running style – he’s a physical runner – but his leadership in the locker room.”
Owens switched from outside to inside linebacker last season and is among the team leaders in tackles. The only senior on the roster is East Orange Campus transfer Jahsaii DeGrassi, who starts at cornerback.
“Last year [3-6 record], we were mostly freshmen and sophomores,” Johnsen said. “Now, we’re still a young team of mostly sophomores and juniors. So, it was just building it and letting them go through the tough part of growing pains.
“We’re not exactly where we want to be, but almost where we want to be.”
The next logical step forward would be contending for the North Jersey Interscholastic Conference title. The NJIC tournament began the year after St. Mary’s last winning season, and the school has yet to qualify.
But getting back into the state tournament is a good sign of progress. Many other key players are juniors, including QB Bradley Higgins, “elite wide receiver” (in Johnsen’s words) BJ Cunningham and jack-of-all-trades Kazier White, who has played Wildcat QB, fullback receiver and outside linebacker.
The NJSIAA brackets are not quite as friendly to smaller non-publics as they were back in the days of three-group alignment. DePaul, an SFC United Division stalwart, is not only a much larger school but also has been tested by sterner competition.
Yet Johnsen knows that facing such a challenge could benefit St. Mary in the long run.
“If we don’t win the game, we get to see where we measure up moving forward against some of the best teams in the state,” he said.
