It was a bitter cold night, with the Blue Devils playing Montclair at Rutgers University. After a sour loss to Summit last week, Westfield came out hot during this matchup, leading 6-0 early on. After some turbulence, the Blue Devils found their footing and came out victorious, beating Montclair 13-5.
The first quarter the Blue Devils looked vibrant. Goal scoring was second nature for Westfield. Senior Billy Gerne was on fire, completing his hat trick only ten minutes into the game. Gerne said, “We implemented a new play in practice this week and we used it today. In the first quarter it had a lot of success.”
The second quarter did not go in the Blue Devils way. After being up 4-0 at the end of the first quarter, Westfield’s offense and defense were falling apart. Montclair very quickly capitalized on the Blue Devils miscommunications. They were finding easy gaps in the Westfield defense and were able to shrink the gap to 7-4 at halftime. Senior quad-captain Drew Pravlik said, “We weren’t taking care of the ball and it was causing a lot of fast breaks. Our defense just broke down a little bit.”
Right out of halftime Montclair was still not giving up. Montclair put one away early making the score 7-5 and creeping up on the Blue Devils. However, Westfield was able to turn it around. Head coach William Wertheimer said, “We spoke at halftime. We talked about how we were kind of losing our way, we weren’t valuing possessions and in the second half that’s all we wanted to do.”
Sophomore Koby Waldman was someone who truly valued possession in the second half and put on a show. On offense Waldman was making space, finding the right passes and ended up scoring two more goals for the night. Gerne said, “Once we got the energy rolling, we just kept going,and going, and going, and going and then they couldn’t stop us.” This was definitely true. For the rest of the night Montclair did not score again and the Blue Devils put up six more points.
Westfield is back in action this Thursday, April 10, playing away against Seton Hall Prep at 4:30 pm. This matchup is one of the most highly anticipated matchups of the year with SHP ranked No. 4 in the state and Westfield being ranked No. 6 in the state. In preparation for the game, Gerne said, “We want to do the basics right and shoot better, and hopefully win of course.”
