Barrons, Patriots ready to do battle on Friday
BY MIKE McDONALD
Staff Writer

Every year, two of the three high school football teams from Woodbridge Township play each other near Thanksgiving in one of the Greater Middlesex Conference's more storied rivalry games.

The Thanksgiving Day game will be played this Friday, which is earlier than usual, and will match up Colonia High School (2-7) against rival Woodbridge High School (4-5) at Woodbridge. Since this will be the last game played this year for both teams, everything will be left on the field when the two teams collide. Any coach will tell you just how important it is to end a season on a positive note, and for one of these teams, that won't happen. More importantly, this game will allow one of the two teams to have bragging rights going into next year.

Woodbridge, with a win next Friday, will have one more win than last year, although they did not qualify for the playoffs, which was their preseason goal, according to head coach Brian Russo. Although it's always a plus to improve upon your team's record from year to year, Russo was not pleased with the way his team started off the season. Woodbridge began the year with a 2-3 start, and the coach was not too thrilled about losing three out of the team's first five games.

"We needed to get off to a good start this year. Last year I considered it a rebuilding year. This year we needed to play much better out of the gate," Russo said.

A tough schedule has not helped matters.

"We certainly have a tough schedule, but we have a good team. We should be able to compete with anybody," Russo said.

Colonia High School, on the other hand, is a team that seemingly took a step back. Last year's team qualified for the state tournament, while this year's squad did not, to the surprise of head coach Ben Lasala, who believed his team would be ready at the beginning of this season.

Despite their somewhat disappointing seasons, both teams are coming off victories. Colonia last played on Nov. 11 and beat Middletown North in a state consolation game, winning the contest by the final score of 27-16. Superstar junior tailback, Eric LeGrand rushed the ball 25 times for 127 yards on the ground. He also scored three touchdowns.

The outstanding numbers put up by LeGrand are nothing new for the 6-2, 240-pound star. For the year LeGrand has gained 688 yards on the ground, on just 122 carries. He is averaging over 5 yards every time the ball is handed to him, and has shown a knack of finding the end zone. He has seven touchdowns in nine games. Last year LeGrand rushed for over 1,000 yards, and his great ability to mix power with the skill to find open holes in the opposing team's defense may buy him a ticket to play for Rutgers in 2009. For now, LeGrand will try to put his mark on this game against Woodbridge.

Woodbridge will look to shutdown LeGrand and thus Colonia's offense, which does very little if LeGrand is unable to get the ground attack going. Woodbridge will look to Garrett Mozolic, Gino Abbate, A.J. Lonardo, Lindsey Alcinay and Adams Issaka, all of whom have over 30 tackles on the year, to slow LeGrand.

Woodbridge, who in its last game against Belleville High School won by the final score of 21-14, will look to get its high-powered offense going against Colonia. Unlike Colonia, which only has one main offensive threat, Woodbridge has a few. However, you cannot possibly talk about Woodbridge without mentioning the play of senior Mozolic. Besides being a prolific player on defense, Mozolic is one great rusher. So far this year, Mozolic has amassed 1,126 yards on the ground. He has eased the way for the team's first-year starting quarterback, junior Anthony Viola, who although he has a poor completion percentage, he has done a decent job behind center. With 163 passing yards on 16 completions, Viola has shown the ability to be a offensive threat himself. His main target has been junior Anthony Graham, who has caught six of Viola's 16 passes completed on the year, for 60 yards.