Published: October 25, 2008 12:21 am            

Johnstown topples Bishop Guilfoyle

It was a game where special teams saw more big plays than a Broadway critic. In the end, Greater Johnstown managed a 36-19 win over visiting Bishop Guilfoyle after coming up with a couple of game-changers that did not begin with a kick.

You could not blame Marauders coach Marty Georgiana for feeling less than special about how the ball bounced after it was touched by any oncoming Guilfoyle foot. Johnstown returned the opening kickoff 60 yards, blocked two extra-point attempts, returned a punt 38 yards to the Guilfoyle 3-yard line, not to mention a punt that landed only five yards beyond the line of scrimmage but bounced back 6 yards for a minus 1-yard kick.

“It just seemed like we kept putting ourselves in a hole in the kicking game,” said Georgiana. “You cannot give a team as good as Johnstown a short field to work with so often and expect it not to catch up to you. It just seemed like we could not stop them.”

Jordan Jefferson handled that opening kick for the Trojans, going from 20-yard line to 20-yard line. Five plays later, quarterback John Siciliano ran four yards for the game’s first score. Then, it was Johnstown’s turn to kick and equally bad things came from the footwork by the Men of Troy with Guilfoyle three times returning kicks deep into Johnstown territory, the first being an 85-yard touchdown scamper by Chris Damiano, which set the first frame at 7-6 Johnstown.

“They just plain outplayed us on special teams. That is the thing that stands out in my mind,” said Trojans coach Kevin Marabito, who managed a chuckle when informed his Bishop Guilfoyle counterpart was saying essentially the same thing.

“That is the way it goes. You expect your team to make plays, so when they do you are happy. But when the other guy gets the big return, then you are left wondering what went wrong.”

The aforementioned minus one-yard punt set up the game’s next score with Johnstown taking control of the ball at the Guilfoyle 11-yard line. Again, it was Siciliano doing the honors, this time from two yards out. Siciliano also had the game’s biggest non-kicking play when, faced with a third-and-long in Trojans territory late in the half, he turned a failed pass play into a more-than-successful 42-yard running play, ultimately leading to a Quadir Christian 1-yard scoring run.

“That was the big one there. We were in our end and time was near gone and, if we punt it away, who knows the way things were going?” said Marabito. “But he (Siciliano) gives us such an added weapon and the play he made there, I think, made all the difference. Getting that score changed the face of the game.”

Siciliano finished with three scoring runs but Trojans teammate Christian turned in some fine footwork of his own, running for 180 yards on 24 carries with two scores, one of them from 69 yards.

“They have some great athletes and given enough chances they are going to bust off a big plays,” Georgiana said.

Until late in the game, Bishop Guilfoyle did not enter Trojans territory except for two long kickoff returns, which both led to Marauder scores, one a two-yard run from quarterback Chris Brown and the other a three-yard pass from Brown to Alex Shafer.

The game’s only other score, fittingly, came from the foot of Trojans kicker Jon Maurizio, who nailed a 39-yard field goal.

        

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