Football Rallies for Opening Win

Livingston's football team overcame a 14-point halftime deficit to beat Millburn 34-26 at home on Sunday, snapping a nine game losing streak.

"It means so much, this gets the monkey off of our back," said Livingston's Anthony Cappuccino about snapping the losing streak. "It's absolutely huge. It means so much to our 23 seniors all the way down to every single sophomore, because I know we went through so much last year."

Down 26-20 after Millburn's Tim Swanson's fourth touchdown reception of the game, it took the Lancers' three plays before senior Anthony Cappuccino rumbled for the go ahead touchdown and extra point from 50-yards out. The score put the Lancers up by one point and they sealed the win with a long 13 play, 65-yard-drive, culminating in a Chase Larangera touchdown with just 40.5 seconds left to play. The drive took up nearly six minutes of game time and effectively ended any chance at a Millburn comeback.

"We realized in the locker room that we went 0-9 last year and it's just not our destiny to go 0-9 this year," Cappuccino said after the game. "We were not taking the loss. The attitude in the locker room was that we were not going to lose this game. We came out and we wore them out."

Barry Kostibos, Livingston's head coach, agreed.

"For our kids, I think it's a great statement," said Kostibos. "It was a situation where we had to prove that we could do this.  What we proved is that we have the capabilities to stay in games. If you stay in games at the high school level, you've got a shot to do some things."

The 50-yard run was the third of the game for Cappuccino, who brought the Lancers within six on a 25-yard touchdown run with 4:33 remaining in the third quarter. He tied the score at 20 late in the third quarter on a 65-yard scamper up the middle.

"In the first half, he had a lot of runs where it was one guy bringing him down," Kostibos said of Cappuccino. "In the second half, he scooted that guy and he got the longer gains, and then he broke those two long ones for touchdowns. He was incredible."

Millburn had a lot of trouble finishing games last season, and things were no different in game one this year. In the first two quarters of play, Millburn dominated on both sides of the ball, picking up three touchdowns, one turnover and 238 yards of offense.  Livingston amassed 119 yards and one touchdown (Matt Flynn on an eight yard run in the first quarter) in the opening half.

In the second half, the Millers gained just 79 yards, forty of which came on the ground. On the contrary, Livingston took over in the third and fourth quarters, rushing for 245 yards in the second half  and an average 10.2 yards per carry (Millburn allowed 4.3 yards per carry in the first half). Cappuccino was a one man gang, accumulating 175 of his 240 rushing yards in the final two quarters. After missing all of last season with an injury, Cappuccino returned to average 12 yards per carry.

"We have to play four quarters. That's what we teach, preach and believe in. Today we played two quarters," said Millburn head coach Carmen Guarino. "We have a lot of guys going both ways. When you have eight nine guys going special teams, offense and defense, conditioning is always a concern. It's not because they're out of shape, there's no conditioning in the world that will make them go four quarters till they play four quarters."

Millburn fell apart in the second half on both sides of the ball in the loss, which is something that has been hurting the teams for over a year. Their first drive of the second half was halted by penalties. Back-to-back sacks of Bednarski ruined the second drive and they went three-and-out on their first possession after Livingston's go ahead touchdown. Millburn's defense just got tired in the end and gave up two thirds of the 351 total yards gained by Livingston in the second half.

"They ran a lot of power, they were running at some of our younger guys I think," Guarino said. "There's nothing that we changed in what we did, we ran the same defenses, we actually ran the whole book just trying to stop them. They were just a little more physical up front than us."

Despite the loss, Swanson had a big day for the Millers, racking up four touchdowns on seven catches for 207 yards. He also laid a couple of vicious blocks in the running game and was very active on special teams for the Millers.

"It was Swanson's day. The only sad part is that it ended with a loss," Guarino said. "Other than that, Timmy had an incredible day. It's just disheartening when you walk off of the field with a loss."

Bednarski threw for 240 yards on 8/16 passing, but completed only one pass to a receiver aside from Swanson.

The next game for Livingston is against Passaic on Sept. 19 at home, while Millburn is at home for Nutley on Sept. 24.