Everyone knew what was coming.
Everyone.
Fans knew it. So did the cheerleaders. The refs knew it, as did the chain gang and concession workers. Security? They knew it.
The old lady walking her dog alongside nearby Bartley Road knew it.
It didn’t take a genius to know: The West Morris offense was running the ball.
And there was nothing Mount Olive could do to stop it.
The Wolfpack blockers were gonna block and the runners were gonna run right behind them.
Here it is, try and stop us.
Mount Olive couldn’t.
West Morris took a whopping nine minutes off the fourth-quarter clock and scored a touchdown when running back Deacon Frayne scored his second of two touchdowns for the go-ahead score on the way to a 16-13 victory over Mount Olive in a battle of unbeatens.
The 2025 Liberty White division championship banner will hang at West Morris – all because of a brutally efficient Wolfpack running game.
The Wolfpack needed 46 carries to amass 209 yards.
But when the chips were down, the team moved the ball on the ground.
“That,” Wolfpack lineman Tommy Borgia said, “was West Morris football.”
West Morris didn’t deviate from what it does best and embarked on their epic drive that was a thing of beauty – especially among the linemen.
“We needed to score,” lineman Blake Parkinson-Gee said. “It was a typical West Morris drive. Get down the field and make them tap out.”
Borgia, Parkinson-Gee, Joey Drown, A.J. Codella, Matt Lacerenza, and tight ends Luke D’Aconti and Sean Conway continually pushed Mount Olive’s defense back during the march.
Frayne (963 yards, 13 TDs) continued his marvelous season.
“It was a blessing to have that kind of pressure that we were in,” Parkinson-Gee said. “It was the final drive to win the conference after all of our months of work. We knew we had potential but we had to put the pieces together. Every single game, we played good on offense or on defense, but this game we brought it all together.”
The Wolfpack O-Line was expected to be as solid as always.
Frayne starring as a runner is one of life’s great ironies.
His dad, Henry, is a longtime Wolfpack assistant and was an all-county lineman at West Morris in the early 2000s. Not only that, he has built a weight training and O-Line culture in town. Deacon’s older brother, Henry, fell in line with that kind of thinking and was a two-time all-county lineman for the Wolfpack. He now plays football at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY.
But when Deacon began playing football at the age of 5, he chose running back and has been running the ball ever since.
In the summer, Frayne showed up at Wolfpack training camp and won the position. He leads the team in carries by a wide margin (156, compared to backfield mates Brody Mansolino’s 81 and Mike Finlay’s 75).
How rare is it for a sophomore to win a starting running back spot at West Morris? Well, a few years back, Stefano Montella couldn’t even do it, and he is arguably the greatest back the school has had this century, if not ever.
“I’ve known Deacon my whole life and I had no idea how good he’d be,” Borgia said. “He has stepped it up. He has been great running the ball and blocking. He is a smart football player, especially for how young he is.”
Frayne has fit in beautifully with his varsity teammates.
“He’s a quiet kid but we all love him,” Borgia said. “He’s a great, great kid, a smart kid, a great athlete, and a tough-nosed football player like his brother and his dad. He is a downhill runner with big legs. Deacon looks great. He is having an awesome sophomore year. We are so proud of him.”
The Wolfpack defense, meanwhile, continually turned aside a Mount Olive attack that is one of the best offenses in all of North Jersey. The West Morris defense held Mount Olive’s high-scoring offense to a season-low amount of points. The high-flying Marauders scored at least 31 points in every game this year and averaged a whopping 44 points per game.
After Frayne’s go-ahead score, West Morris’ defense dug in and held the Marauders scoreless the rest of the way.
“It was the best defensive game we have played by far,” Borgia said, crediting the work of DBs Sam Turner, Finlay, Brendan Dwyer, Tyler Klein, and Stephen Braccioforte, LBs John Garcia and Frayne, and himself, Julian Lopez, and Codella up front. “Our secondary shined. Early on they got beat on two routes but after that they settled down.”
Mount Olive drove downfield to begin the second half, but Turner intercepted a pass at his own 21 to short-circuit the drive.
But the Marauders would score on their next possession when Malcolm Gilyard scored a 5-yard touchdown to put his team ahead, 13-8.
A short time later, West Morris would embark on its clutch march and take the lead for good.
The Wolfpack stepped up in the nick of time.
“That last drive and we knew it was our time,” Borgia said. “It was now or never because we were losing. We did what we did, pounded the rock. Nothing fancy. We did some Power I. We switched it up a bit inside the 5. We switched up the pace. It’s always good to give them something different.”
“It was a lot of motivating each other, talking about what we have to do,” Parkinson-Gee added. “I have the same persona no matter what, and that’s to beat the guy in front of me and get the job done. It doesn’t matter if it is Jet Sweep in the other direction or Belly right behind me. I’m gonna block my guy.”
And now they are division champions of what is clearly the best division in the Morris-Sussex area.
“It’s amazing,” Parkinson-Gee said. “We knew we’d be pretty good. At East Stroudsburg camp, Coach Frayne talked about the potential we had to be here. It’s an amazing feeling.”
