The South River High School football team isn’t satisfied despite beating Bishop George Ahr High School, 35-12, on Sept. 23.
“[We need to work on] the running game for sure,” South River head coach Rich Marchesi said. “We’re working on our running game. We got better at it last week. We still need to work on it. It will be a point of interest going forward.”
Junior quarterback Michael DeSantis agreed that the run game needs some improvement. DeSantis threw for 246 yards and rung up four touchdowns in the game.
“We have to get our run game going,” DeSantis said. “I want to be consistent in both passing and running the ball. If we can do that, it will help our offense a lot.”
The Rams were prolific in the passing game and are confident in their ability to air it out when necessary.
“I think our passes have been money for the past three weeks,” Marchesi said. “When we got in trouble, they were stuffing the middle and stuffing the run a little bit. But I think anytime we went to pass, off anything — off the waggle, the boot, the verticals — I think we were successful.”
“Our pass game really worked today,” DeSantis said. “We knew we could spread them out. Our receivers are great. We knew what we had. We knew how we were going to beat them, and we did.”
Despite starting the season 3-0 after the victory over Bishop Ahr, Marchesi wants to temper his expectations.
“We’re taking it one game at a time,” he said. “[I know that’s] coach speak, but we got a big game at Keyport [High School on Sept. 30], and they beat us last year. We’re looking forward to next week.”
Senior wide receiver Travis Thomas caught a touchdown in the game and liked what he saw in the offense.
“We really had a good run game and pass game today,” Thomas said. “We really want to just keep doing that, which we did, and get the win.”
Thomas knew the defense was disappointed in giving up two first-half touchdowns.
“We still need to work on our defense,” Thomas said. “The way we play in practice, we don’t think we should give up any points. So next game, we’re going to focus on our defense.”
Thomas and DeSantis have big expectations for the season.
“Our expectations are to win the [Greater Middlesex Conference] Blue [Division],” Thomas said. “We want to go undefeated and win the championship.”
“Just keep doing what we’re doing,” DeSantis said. “Keep playing hard. Keep playing as a team. Take every game one by one, and just try to make it to the playoffs.”
The Rams will take on host Keyport on Sept. 30 at 7 p.m.
