Lodi football spoils Garfield's stadium opening with overtime win

GARFIELD — The Garfield Boilermakers debuted a brand-new football stadium at their high school Thursday night.

Rival Lodi, however, came in and played “spoilermaker.”

Senior Shane Bell ran for a three-yard touchdown in overtime to lift the visiting Rams past Garfield, 20-14, in a chippy NJIC Colonial Division opener.

The Boilermakers had the ball first in OT, but the Lodi defense held thanks to a fourth-down sack. Facing a similar situation on their possession, the Rams called a time out to talk over potential fourth-and-goal plays.

“He [Bell] said, ‘Give me the ball,’ and I said, ‘That’s a no-brainer’,” Lodi coach Mark Maggio said. “We let him just race to the pylon and be the athlete that he is.”

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The Rams trailed 14-0 at halftime after completing just 4-of-16 passes. But they came out running in the second half, scored on their first possession and tied the game with 4:51 to play.

“We started off the game a little slow,” Bell said. “But we had to come back out [to start the third quarter] and just keep fighting.”

What it means

Lodi (1-0) equaled its win total from a year ago, when its lone victory came at the expense of Garfield, 26-20. The Rams have now won three straight in the Battle of Outwater Lane and lead the all-time series, 25-23.

Garfield (0-1) missed the chance to christen its new FieldTurf complex with a victory. The new stadium has yet to be named, and the scoreboard bearing the old name of Arthur C. Argauer Field also is destined for replacement.

Key plays

The Boilermakers built their lead on a pair of touchdown passes from sophomore QB Talib McCullough to speedy senior wideout Xavier Sanabria – the first for 74 yards and the second for 29.

Although Lodi ran the ball much more effectively in the second half, both touchdowns came on passes from Evan Kuhl. The second was an 18-yarder to Chris Taveras in the fourth quarter, after which Kuhl ran in the tying two-point conversion on a variation of the “swinging gate” play.

“We have a new holder, and yesterday, we were about 30 percent” at successful placekicks, Maggio noted. The Rams eschewed a field goal in overtime for the same reason.

By the numbers

123: Total yards for Bell in the game, with 10 carries for 76 and a TD and three catches for 47.

28: Combined penalties in the game, including 19 by Garfield for 135 yards

3: Overtime games in the all-time series. Lodi won the first in 2006, 20-19, and Garfield won the second in 2014, 35-29.

They said it

“We have a group of seven or eight young men that were on the field tonight who’ve never played before. And we actually pulled up a video the other day of James Franklin from Penn State, talking to his guys about how it’s all about the team. If you make it about the team, you’ll get rewarded tenfold, and I think tonight, we did.” — Maggio

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Lodi football spoils Garfield's stadium opening with overtime win