His foul play forgotten, Cougars’ McKenzie back in fair territory
SPRINGFIELD » Ja’den McKenzie’s words don’t often fail him. But he had no template for describing last week.
There was McKenzie, in street clothes, watching his Springfield teammates throttle Penncrest in the first round of the District 1 Class 5A playoffs. McKenzie didn’t strap on the pads with his mates because the previous week, in a contentious game with the Central League title in the balance at Haverford, he was flagged for two unsportsmanlike conduct personal fouls, triggering an ejection and an automatic one-game suspension. It left McKenzie marooned on the sidelines, powerless to affect a game that could’ve very well been his last as a high school football player.
So after a week expanding his mentorship role — to backfield partner Philip Shovlin and understudy Geo Dotsicas — that led to a 38-0 blanking of the Lions, McKenzie got his reprieve. And with it came the palpable feeling from his teammates that a well-rested and a remotivated McKenzie would be raring to go as the topseeded Cougars approached the next hurdle in their path.
Friday, McKenzie authored a typically stellar all-around game in Springfield’s 28-7 handling of No. 9 West Chester Rustin, moving the Cougars to 12-0 on the season.
“It was tough because that’s the first time I ever missed a varsity game or missed a game in general,” McKenzie said. “So it was kind of hard. But I couldn’t show that to my team, that it was hurting me. I had to keep going, motivate Geo and tell him, ‘You’ve got to keep going, got to fill my steps.’”
It didn’t make McKenzie’s one-week sabbatical any easier that it came on an iffy call, his second infraction, one where he got tangled up as he and the Haverford player he had just leveled tried to return to their feet. (The first, for woofing at an opponent after McKenzie scored a touchdown and in which both players were flagged, was heartily earned).
And the differing perspective of the sidelines for a player who rarely misses a snap on offense or defense wasn’t much consolation. That only served to increase his angst.
“Seeing how our plays develop, by me watching it shows me where the ball should hit and where we should be going,” McKenzie said. “But other than that, it was pretty hard for me to watch on the sidelines.”
Dotsicas and Shovlin filled the void in handling Penncrest, and McKenzie reciprocated Friday. It wasn’t his most spectacular game — 20 carries for 97 yards and a rushing touchdown; three catches for 36 yards. For a player that entered the game with 1,000 yards rushing, 15 touchdowns on the ground and four on the defensive side, those figures are only OK. But the impact exceeded the raw numbers.
Two vignettes to illustrate:
Late second quarter, Springfield’s leading by just one score (via a 46-yard halfback pass from Frank Durham Jr. to Kyle Long set up by a fourth-down stand that McKenzie contributed to) with neither team moving the ball convincingly. Springfield faces a thirdand-13 at its 29.
Quarterback Jack Psenicska connects with McKenzie for a 15-yard gain on a comeback route into a soft spot in the secondary. McKenzie comes up lame but stays in the game. He’s limping more after a sevenyard pickup on a screen from Psenicska on the next set of downs. But despite hobbling, he stays in to burst for 19 yards between the tackles on third down.
Five plays later, Psenicska finds Long for a four-yard score and a 14-0 lead with 19 seconds left before halftime.
Fast-forward to the third quarter, with Springfield up 14-0 and a first down at its 37. McKenzie’s number is called eight straight plays, then two carries for Shovlin, then two more for McKenzie, capped by a two-yard score. In all, the drive eats up the final seven minutes of the third quarter and first 51 ticks of the fourth to put victory beyond the shadow of a doubt.
“He’s probably our best overall player, offensively and defensively,” said Long, who is among a half-dozen players with a place in that conversation. “He’s a big part of our team. But Geo stepped up and played well last week. And we got (Ja’den) a bye week. So he’s fresh coming out, and we knew he was going to come out to play well tonight. No surprise that he does.”
Long wavered on whether McKenzie’s absence was more pronounced on offense or defense. With his return, Springfield was typically stingy. The Cougars caused two turnovers, stopped Rustin on three fourth-down attempts (one a fake punt) and muzzled a run-first attack that blistered Great Valley for 394 yards last week to just 101 Friday on 30 carries. While the Cougars’ interior linemen did most of the stuffing Friday, McKenzie’s linebacker play is a vital cog, just as those bigs deserve a share of credit when McKenzie churns out yards with the ball.
Springfield’s success — this season and in the last half-decade under coach Chris Britton — has always been predicated on the team aspect, never dependent on one star. And McKenzie, the closest thing to a star in the stable, could’ve weighed the entire endeavor down in a week that he wasn’t on the field.
Instead, he channeled the disappointment into helping his teammates while biding his time as patiently as sweatpants and a letterman’s jacket would allow him to.
And when restored to the lineup, he delivered.
“He wasn’t a distraction. He was ready to go,” Long said. “He was pissed about it. He knows he put himself in a bad spot — the refs probably didn’t help him out — but he came back and was ready to go.”
“It was just coming back, and play as myself,” McKenzie said. “I was fully healthy. I just needed to do me and play hard. I was supposed to come out here, do me and go back to Ja’den playing Ja’den McKenzie.”