ELIZABETH—Friday night, Elizabeth took the field full of determination to keep alive its magical unbeaten season and hopes for a first state sectional championship in 14 years.
Forty-eight rain-soaked minutes later, the Minutemen received an emphatic reminder that Passaic County Tech is still the standard-bearer of North Jersey Group 5 football.
The fourth-seeded Bulldogs ran for more than 300 yards and locked down No. 1 Elizabeth’s high-octane offense to earn a 35-0 NJSIAA North 2, Group 5 semifinal victory at Williams Field.
Senior running back Randy Lewis led the way with 102 rushing yards and a pair of touchdowns, while UCF-bound linebacker Ian McDuffie returned an interception for a touchdown for Passaic Tech (8-3). The Bulldogs will make their seventh consecutive sectional final appearance dating back to 2019, not counting the COVID-shortened 2020 campaign in which no playoffs were held.
Elizabeth finished its season with a 10-1 record, its best since the 2012 squad went 11-0 and won the program’s most recent sectional title behind future NFL quarterback Phillip “P.J.” Walker.
Senior quarterback Arique Fleming, a four-year starter who has rewritten the record books at Elizabeth, and surpassed Walker as its career leader in passing yards and passing touchdowns, had a tough night in his final scholastic game. Battling the weather conditions and a ferocious PCT defense, he was just 11-of-21 for a season-low 110 yards and a season-high 3 interceptions. His 14-game streak of throwing at least one touchdown pass was also snapped.
“It wasn’t the result we wanted by any means, but I’m just so proud of these kids,” said head coach Eugene Kline. “We had an incredible season, and we did a lot of things we can be proud of all year. Passaic Tech is a damn good football team, and we were gonna have to really execute to beat them tonight. We just didn’t do it. Too many mistakes, too many penalties in key spots. It wasn’t meant to be tonight.”
As for Passaic Tech, they’ll be on the road again for next weekend’s N2G5 title tilt, set to face No. 3 Phillipsburg, which defeated No. 2 East Orange Campus, 31-13, in Saturday's sectional semifinal action.
Regrdless of once again being on the road in the upcoming sectional final very little seems to faze these battle-tested Bulldogs.
“We just have lots of kids who are fighters,” said head coach Matt Demarest, who will be aiming to lead PCT to its fourth sectional title in five years next weekend. “We had to come out of the gate incredibly fast this year with the schedule we play. We had a lot of kids who got a lot of valuable experience early in the season, sometimes by necessity because of injuries. But we have been working all year to make sure that we’re playing our best football right now.”
Passaic Tech started the year 2-3, though all three losses came to fellow powerhouse programs Shabazz, Irvington and Ramapo. They’ve been on a tear ever since. After closing the regular season with four straight comfortable wins over Super Football Conference opponents, the Bulldogs took care of their first two playoff foes (Bridgewater-Raritan and Elizabeth, both out of the Big Central Conference) by a combined score of 70-0.
Friday night, they did it with dominance on both sides of the line of scrimmage and by forcing timely turnovers to prevent the explosive Minutemen (38.6 points per game entering Friday) from keeping pace.
Elizabeth had the field position edge and scoring chances throughout the first quarter, but could not capitalize. On PCT’s second snap from scrimmage Fleming, also a standout linebacker, forced a fumble that was recovered by EHS teammate Eric Cespedes. The Minutemen advanced as far as the Passaic Tech 23 before that drive stalled with a failed fourth-down attempt. Their next drive got inside the Bulldogs’ 30, but a holding penalty proved to be critical in snuffing out the threat, leading to another fourth-down attempt coming up short.
From that point on, it was all Passaic Tech.
The Bulldogs’ three-headed running monster of Lewis, Ahmad Williams (67 yards and a touchdown after switching over from wide receiver this week), and quarterback Bryce Longo (83 yards, TD) started to wear down Elizabeth’s defensive front, picking up steady gains and regularly breaking tackles. Longo broke three, in fact, on the game’s first scoring play, a 4-yard run with 7:35 left before halftime.
Two plays later, the flow of the game changed entirely when a Fleming pass over the middle was snatched out of the air by McDuffie, who raced 42 yards untouched to give Passaic Tech a 14-0 lead. It was just Fleming’s fifth interception of the season.
“The kids have really been working hard, and they bought into the game plan we had for this game,” Demarest said. “Elizabeth has some outstanding football players. We watched [Fleming] on film, and he’s really fabulous at making big plays for them, especially when he’s able to scramble. We’ve got some good players of our own, and they worked their tails off to get the result we got tonight.”
After an Elizabeth three-and-out, PCT delivered a major blow just before halftime, as Williams dove into the end zone from 10 yards out on a 4th-and-3, extending the lead to 21-0 with 20 ticks left. A last-ditch drive saw Fleming picked off by junior defensive back Chris Davis in the end zone as the half expired.
It looked like the Minutemen might come out of halftime with a spark, as Cespedes appeared to return the second-half kickoff 90 yards for a touchdown. However, it was called back by another backbreaking holding penalty. Elizabeth was penalized 9 times for 95 yards, including several on would-be explosive plays.
Instead of a two-score game, Passaic Tech re-established control by forcing a fumble on Elizabeth’s ensuing drive, Williams jarring it loose and Davis recovering it. Four plays later, Lewis scampered through two broken tackles on a 23-yard run that pushed the lead to 28-0.
Elizabeth’s fourth and final turnover came on the first play of the following possession, a spectacular leaping interception of Fleming by sophomore Malachi McGregor. The Bulldogs turned that into yet another touchdown, this one a 19-yard Lewis run that activated the mercy-rule running clock with 1:46 left in the third period.
A SEASON TO REMEMBER IN BETSYTOWN
Despite falling short of the school’s first sectional title since 2012, Elizabeth turned in its finest season in more than a decade under Kline, who is 19-10 with the program since taking charge as an interim coach midseason in 2024.
Led by senior standouts like Fleming (2,341 pass yards, 27 TD, both single-season school records), dynamic receivers Cespedes, Quayon Williams and Nahjae Smith (combined 1,300 receiving yards and 19 TD), and defensive stalwarts LB Isaiah Butler and DE Jaden Mondesir, these Minutemen won the program’s first Big Central Conference division title and finished above .500 for just the third time since 2015.
Several of those seniors saw varsity time as freshmen in 2023, when the Minutemen started the season with six straight losses, all by seven points or fewer, before finishing 3-8. They end their high school careers in rarefied air, becoming just the sixth Elizabeth team in 130 years – including the years when the school was known as Thomas Jefferson or Battin – to start a season 9-0.
“Our seniors, man, I can’t say enough about them. They have absolutely changed this program,” Kline said. “A lot of these guys, we threw them out there as young pups and they took their lumps, and they had some successes, too. Things just kind of came together for us this year in a really beautiful way, and that’s a credit to our senior leadership. What they’ve achieved this year, and the way they’ve led this program, if that carries through and becomes the standard here for our next group of guys, we’re going to be alright. The cupboard’s not bare here in Elizabeth. We’re going to have to coach them up and develop guys, but we think we can be very competitive next year and beyond.”
NJSIAA North 2, Group 5 Semifinal
at Williams Field, Elizabeth
#4 Passaic Tech (8-3) 0 21 14 0 - 35
#1 Elizabeth (10-1) 0 0 0 0 - 0
1st Quarter
No scoring
2nd Quarter
P—Bryce Longo 4 run (Christopher Motta kick), 7:35. Drive: 10 plays, 72 yards, 4:16.
P—Ian McDuffie 42 interception return (Motta kick), 6:42.
P—Ahmad Williams 10 run (Motta kick), 0:20. Drive: 9 plays, 75 yards, 4:08.
3rd Quarter
P—Randy Lewis 23 run (Motta kick), 6:45. Drive: 4 plays, 52 yards, 2:02.
P—Lewis 19 run (Motta kick), 1:46. Drive: 9 plays, 77 yards, 4:43.
4th Quarter
No scoring
NJSIAA North 2, Group 5 sectional tournament
Quarterfinals – weekend of Oct. 30-31
[1] Elizabeth def. [8] Linden, 35-12
[4] Passaic Tech def. [5] Bridgewater-Raritan, 35-0
[2] East Orange def. [7] Union City, 14-13
[3] Phillipsburg def. [6] Ridgewood, 38-27
Semifinals
[4] Passaic Tech def. [1] Elizabeth, 35-0
[3] Phillipsburg def. [2] East Orange, 31-13
Sectional final – Friday, Nov. 13
[4] Passaic Tech at (3) Phillipsburg, 7 p.m.
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