Championship Buzz: Holmdel Football Aims For Its First State Title

A dream that began in fifth grade for the seniors on the Holmdel football team is now three wins from becoming reality. 

“You definitely feel the buzz around town,” senior quarterback Jack Cannon said. 

“It’s the talk of the town now. How far will Holmdel go?” senior wide receiver James Murphy said. “Teachers, students, even people at the bagel store on Saturday morning are asking about it. Now it’s starting to become real.” 

Holmdel has never won a state sectional title in program history. The only time the Hornets made the final was in 1991.

That first fact was drilled into the Holmdel seniors’ heads as they came up through the youth levels. They vowed to change it. 

This is the best chance they have ever had, as they enter the Central Jersey Group 3 playoffs on Friday night as the No. 1 seed with home field advantage through the championship game. 

“I’m excited,” head coach Noel Kavanagh said. “We have the opportunity to do something special. I  just try to go one game at a time with our kids. There’s a lot of chatter about a sectional title and all that, and that’s our goal. It’s not a secret, but in order to get to that, we have to get by Cinnaminson first (in the quarterfinals), so we focus on that.” 

There are three reasons Holmdel has a good chance to finally hoist that first state title banner in a bracket that includes a perennial contender in Somerville as the No. 2 seed, a quality Seneca program and a pair of Shore Conference teams in Matawan and Neptune. 

 

1. The Shore’s Best Offense

Holmdel has its most prolific offense in school history. The Hornets enter the playoffs averaging 41.3 points per game, which leads the Shore Conference.

Cannon has seemingly every record in Holmdel history, so all that’s missing is that elusive state title. The Dartmouth recruit has accounted for 40 total touchdowns and 3,014 yards of total offense this season as one of the top dual threat quarterbacks in New Jersey. No team has stopped him all year, and no team has held Holmdel under 28 points. 

Murphy has 645 yards receiving and eight touchdowns on an average of 25.8 yards per catch in Holmdel’s spread attack under Kavanagh. He is one of four quality receivers, including sophomore Anthony Serini (33-517-5), junior wideout Mike Todisco (24-312-2) and tight end Carmine Aliperti (15-204-1). 

“I think that Coach Kav’s scheme is unbelievable,” Murphy said. “It’s a defense’s worst nightmare. We have an amazing QB in Jack Cannon and a great line, plus this senior class has been especially close-knit. I think all the pieces we’ve been working on since fifth grade, it’s like they are all aligning.” 

“Everyone is on the same page on every play,” senior two-way lineman Luke Schiess said. “It’s just a well-oiled machine. We can trust each other to know what we’re doing in every situation.” 

Cannon has been running the offense for three years, so he knows it inside and out. He also is masterful at turning a broken play into a massive gain by keeping his eyes downfield or taking off and running. Holmdel is never out of a game as long as he is back there. 

The main issue has been shoring up a defense that allows 27.5 points per game and just gave up 38 to Middletown North last week. 

“It’s definitely a team effort, and our defense has to play well as well,” Kavanagh said. “We’ve had issues on defense with games where we blew coverages and struggled here and there, and other games where the defense played great. We’ve just got to be more consistent.” 

“Our mindset is that the only one who beats us is us,” Schiess said. “We have to cut down the mistakes defensively and play clean games because we have enough talent to pull it off.”

Holmdel has switched it up a bit in practice going into the first-round game against Cinnaminson. Normally the offensive starters don’t compete against the defensive starters for more than a handful of plays in practice to keep everyone fresh and healthy. Now they have been doing it on every play. 

“It’s every single rep,” Cannon said. “Iron sharpens iron. It’s a different mentality this week.”  

2. A Tougher Schedule

The Hornets may have played their toughest schedule in school history and still emerged as the third-ranked team in the Shore Sports Insider Top 12 at 6-2. They played four teams currently ranked in the top seven in the Shore by SSI and two others (Middletown North and Middletown South) that were ranked at one point. 

Running the gauntlet in Class A North and playing nondivisional games against Brick Memorial, which is the No. 1 seed in Central Jersey Group 4, and Donovan Catholic, which is a contender in Non-Public B, looks to pay off in the postseason. Seven of Holmdel’s eight opponents made the state playoffs. 

“I think in prior years at Holmdel, we may have not had the best strength of schedule, and that might have hurt us in the playoffs,” Cannon said. “This year we were well-tested, we played games hard for four quarters, and I think we showed we can compete with a lot of teams in the Shore and the state.” 

“We’ve already been playing the best, so it’s no major jump up from here,” Murphy said. “For eight weeks straight we’ve been playing great teams. I think that’s good because instead of having to jump up to competition, I think we’re right there, or teams are jumping up to us.” 

The trickier part is that Holmdel has perennially been the underdog in the state playoffs. Even though the Hornets have never won a state title, they’re now almost expected to do it as the No. 1 seed. They enter the postseason with way more external expectations than usual. 

“When we play like we’re the underdog, we’re unstoppable,” Murphy said. “We took it to Donovan and RFH when we were the underdogs in those games and everyone was picking against us. There was something in that locker room that made us unstoppable, and we need to keep that mentality even though we’re the 1 seed.” 

“We were riding high, and we got complacent after beating Rumson and almost beating RBC,” Schiess said. “I think the Brick Memorial loss especially turned our heads to the stuff we have to improve as a team and come together.” 

 

3. A Firsthand Look at a State Championship Team

Holmdel thought last year might be the season when it would finally get over the hump and win a state title, but the Hornets received a cold dose of reality in the sectional semifinals. 

They went to South Jersey to face Mainland and got blown out 48-13 in a game that was 34-0 at halftime. A program that has won nine sectional titles and been to the finals 11 times showed them what it takes to be a champion. 

“I think we really kind of saw a different level of football that day, and we aspired to be the Mainland of this year and take our game to the next level like theirs was last year,” Cannon said. 

“That game was eye-opening,” Murphy said. “We went in feeling on top of the world after blowing out Oakcrest (in the first round) and thinking Mainland is not ready for us, and then we got down there and we got punched in the nose. I think that opened our eyes to what we have to be, and opened our eyes to what we have to do to other teams to be feared like that. Once we’re doing that, we’ve got teams beat because half the battle is mental.” 

Another aspect struck Schiess during the Mainland loss. 

“We looked at them last year, and they were not the biggest team,” he said. “They’re not dominating teams with 6-5, 250-pound guys. They have a similar-sized team to what we had, which made us realize that we can do this. If they’re able to have this level of success, that’s a level we can reach as well.” 

They also have a coach who knows all about reaching that level, as Kavanagh was previously an assistant on state championship teams at Freehold Boro and Neptune under Mark Ciccotelli.

“They do know that myself and other coaches have been to the big game and won it before, so we know how to manage those situations,” Kavanagh said. 

The experience, talent and coaching add up to a team eager to finally erase that zero next to its name after “state titles.”

A building project that started seven years ago is almost near completion. 

“It’s been since about fifth grade that we understood no one at Holmdel had ever won a sectional title,” Cannon said. “It’s been a goal for seven or eight years. We need to keep playing with that underdog mentality. Everyone is starting to realize we can do this. We just need to put our best effort on the field, every single play, and finally go achieve that goal.”

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