Kingston takes step back in loss to Monroe
Miscues against Crusaders result in 13th straight loss for rebuilding Tigers
For much of the first half, Kingston High’s football team hung tough with Monroe-Woodbury.
Then the mistakes started to happen: poor tackling, poor blocking, missed assignments, dropped passes. The hallmarks of a young rebuilding club still trying to get on the same page.
The Tigers showed glimmers of improvement in last week’s 8- 0 loss to Minisink Valley. They took a step back Saturday night and, against a stronger Monroe team, the outcome was harsher. The (31) Crusaders pulled away for a 39-7 victory at Dietz Stadium.
“We wore down more assignment-wise in my opinion. Some guys were tired, but we try to keep a fresh rotation,” Kingston coach Quintin Johnson said. “Our assignments wore down, so we stopped doing our job. I tell the kids every week, it takes four quarters to win a game. You can’t do your job half the time and expect in the fourth quarter to have a chance. You have to keep going and work through it. That’s what happened tonight.”
The Tigers are now 0-3 in Section 9’s Class AA Division I
and 0-4 overall, losing their 13th in a row.
Junior wide receiver Jack Dembia caught two touchdown passes from Steven Campione and also ran for one score, Bradley Byrnes rushed for 121 yards and two TDs and Campione ran for 89 yards and one TD to lead Monroe.
Kingston trailed only 6- 0 after one quarter, the result of Monroe capitalizing on a short punt and Campione’s 4-yard TD to Dembia. Byrnes swept 3 yards to the end zone in the opening minute of the second quarter for a 12-0 advantage.
Kingston got a turnover when the Crusaders muffed a punt return, but fumbled it right back on the next play at midfield. On fourthand-10, Campione picked a low snap off the ground and lofted a 34-yard strike to Dembia to make it 19-0.
The Tigers responded with their best drive of the night to end the half: a 10-play, 72-yard march that featured a 16-yard run by JaVar Tinsley, a 10yard burst from Matt Am-
ato and Chapman Parker scrambling out of pressure to throw a 26-yard pass to Amato.
That gave Kingston firstand-goal on the Monroe 3. Amato drove up the middle, only to have defensive back Dylan Wynn penetrate and stand him up for no gain. Tinsley got the call on the next play. Once again, Wynn sliced through the middle, but the senior back stopped and swung left for the touchdown. Justin Longo’s extra point had the Tigers down 19-7 at halftime.
Kingston could not sustain anything offensively in the second half. It went three-and-out on the first three drives and defensive end Jack Colbath intercepted a fourth-down pass on the next series,
Tinsley, who finished with 80 yards, got half of that on a 42-yard sprint down the near sidelines midway through the fourth quarter. The Tigers reached the Monroe 15 before Tinsley was stripped and linebacker Jamal Aouad recovered the fumble.
Dembia scored on a 3-yard run and Byrnes on an 18-yard burst in the third quarter. Campione capped the scoring with a
2-yard keeper in the fourth.
Kingston registered six first downs overall and just two on long plays (Tinsley’s run, Chapman’s 26-yard pass to Manny Wilson) in the second half.
“Offensively, we didn’t execute. Our assignments were just off and that’s a good football team,” said Johnson, nodding toward the Monroe players. ‘ You can’t afford those critical errors and those things in a game like this, but this is what you’re going to get.
“It’s frustrating, because we have the potential to do a lot of good things offensively. We’ve showed flashes of it. Our struggle week-in and week-out is doing it consistently — doing it consistently in practice and doing it consistently in the game. We struggle in both places.
“If we just didn’t have it, I’d say we’d just don’t have it, but we have it,” Johnson remarked. “It’s a matter of channeling it day-in and day-out, game-in and game-out. The kids don’t give up. They don’t stop fighting, which I appreciate. That’s the most we can ask of them, but we got to definitely clean up our assignments and give ourselves a better chance and not make so many critical errors on our own.”
Asked if the team took a step back Saturday, Johnson said, “I can’t disagree with that.
“We take a step forward and, sometimes, we take a step back. We got to keep moving forward.”
Because of the Jewish holiday schedule, the Tigers have a quick turnaround and play a nondivisional game 7 p.m. Thursday at Washingtonville. The Tigers return to Dietz Oct. 7 for a rare Saturday afternoon (1:30 p.m.) contest for Homecoming.