Setting the Bar: Barnegat Flag Football Wins Division Title in First Season
LITTLE EGG HARBOR TWP. – Barnegat flag football coach Andrew Petruzzi felt like after the Bengals’ first few games he had a team with the ingredients to do something special this season.
Now he has the proof.
In their first season of existence, the Bengals are already hanging a banner after a hard-fought, 14-7 road win on Thursday over defending champion Pinelands gave them the Shore Conference South Division title.
“It means everything,” star sophomore quarterback Camila Chamorro said. “There was a lot of anticipation for this game, and we pushed through. It just feels good. We’re making history, and we’re shocking the Shore. We’re making a name not just for Barnegat but girls flag football in general. It’s amazing.”
The victory improved the Bengals to 9-0 and also unofficially clinched them the No. 1 seed in the upcoming Shore Conference Tournament, which will be officially seeded on Friday. Barnegat and Central Division champion Trinity Hall, which is expected to be the No. 2 seed, are the only unbeaten teams left in the Shore.
“It feels great especially because it’s our first year,” said sophomore wide receiver Syrah Holmes, who made her team-leading 11th touchdown catch. “I’m proud of our team for winning everything.”
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Barnegat has set the bar high for a first-year program.
“Way beyond,” Petruzzi said. “If you told me that we would be 9-0 division champs and going into the playoffs with a bye, I would say you’re nuts. When I was asked to coach this team, I didn’t know what I had. I got to practice this first week and I said, ‘I think I’ve got some pieces.’ As the weeks went on I said, ‘We can play with anybody. We might not beat everybody, but we can play with anybody.’”
Chamorro, who leads the Shore Conference in passing yards and crossed the 2,000-yard mark on Thursday, tossed a pair of first-half touchdown passes while also running for an extra point and throwing for another for all the points the Bengals would need.
Barnegat’s Julia Giangregorio eludes Pinelands defenders on her way to a 58-yard catch and run in a 14-7 Bengals win. (Photo by Scott Stump)
The second half belonged to the defense, which shut out the Wildcats (7-2, 7-2) after halftime by coming up with two clutch flag pulls on fourth down inside their own 5-yard line. Barnegat had not been held under 19 points all season and entered averaging a Shore Conference-best 33.8 points per game, so the Bengals showed they are capable of winning a low-scoring slugfest if necessary.
“We honestly played the best we have on defense (all season), and we held an amazing team to only one touchdown,” said freshman defensive back Julia Giangregorio, who had one of those crucial flag pulls. “No matter how hard the game got, we held our own on defense.”
“I am so proud of how well my girls have played defense,” Petruzzi said. “We shut out some teams this year, but that was a defensive struggle (on Thursday). We couldn’t get anything going. They shut down our big guns, but our defense stepped up.”
Barnegat quarterback Camila Chamorro fights for extra yards in the Bengals’ 14-7 win over Pinelands that gave them the South Division title. (Photo by Scott Stump)
After the teams traded three-and-outs to start the game, Barnegat drove 38 yards in five plays to get on the board. Chamorro shook off having a touchdown pass called back due to a penalty and found Giangregorio for a 10-yard touchdown strike in the back of the end zone on fourth and goal. Chamorro then ran in the extra point for a 7-0 lead with 2:05 left in the first quarter.
“It felt great to just get the energy going and celebrate with my team,” Giangregorio said about the touchdown.
The Barnegat defense then forced another punt, setting up a three-play, 27-yard drive for the offense. Chamorro eluded a defender and then lofted a 14-yard touchdown pass to Holmes with 10:29 left in the first half. She then converted an extra-point pass for a 14-0 lead.
Pinelands found the end zone shortly before halftime with a six-play, 35-yard drive that ended when senior Bree McCorry took a handoff on a reverse and threw a 5-yard touchdown pass to Madison Fontanes. Senior quarterback Heidi Cyphert then found senior Kassidy Minor for an extra-point pass to cut it to 14-7 with 1:42 left in the half.
Pinelands senior Jayla Kline takes on a Barnegat defender in a 14-7 loss to the Bengals. (Photo by Scott Stump)
Neither team found the end zone in the second half as the Pinelands’ defense held Barnegat to 67 total yards, 58 of which came on one pass from Chamorro to Giangregorio. The Bengals’ defense bent but didn’t break, twice coming up with crucial stops with their backs to the goal line. Sophomore Natalya Novitsky also added her Shore Conference-leading 16th sack of the season in the win.
Pinelands had a 13-play, 61-yard drive in the third quarter but came away with nothing to show for it. Giangregorio came up with a flag pull on Pinelands’ Kayla Harris at the 2-yard line on fourth-and-goal with 3:43 left in the period for a huge stop.
The Wildcats again were right at the doorstep in the fourth quarter, but a sack by Barnegat junior Amaya Afflick on fourth-and-goal from the 1-yard line denied them.
“It was stressful, but the goal was to pull the flag, and that’s what I did,” Afflick said.
Barnegat also forced an incompletion on fourth-and-goal from the 12-yard line to kill the last real scoring threat by Pinelands. Much like their 14-13 loss to Central earlier this season, Pinelands moved the ball but just couldn’t finish drives in the red zone. The Wildcats hope to find redemption in the upcoming Shore Conference Tournament.
“I told the girls we’re going to have to play one extra game,” Pinelands coach John Tierney said. “Our way to get there will be a little bit tougher. We’ll have to take a couple road trips, but if we want to win it, we have to go through the best teams out there.”
The Bengals, meanwhile, picked up an impressive win over an established program that reached the Shore Conference championship game last season. Barnegat and Pinelands are also southern Ocean County rivals across all sports.
“The whole bus ride, everybody had the jitters the whole day,” Chamorro said. “We just had to use that nervousness and push through and let our game speak. We were anxious, but I think we handled it really well. It was really intense.”
Scott Stump is the football editor and a reporter for Shore Sports Insider. He first started covering Shore Conference football in 1999 and has covered basketball, baseball and seemingly every other Shore Conference sport at some point.
Email: scottstump25@gmail.com
