Wallkill Valley’s Ryder Accardi took a year off from football last year.

The Rangers are glad he came back.

The SFC-National Blue isn’t – and that goes double for Whippany Park.

Accardi caught two TD passes, including a dramatic 14-yard touchdown pass from quarterback Zack Clarken in the closing seconds, to lift the Rangers to a wild 14-7 victory over Whippany to clinch at least a tie for the National Blue division title.

Wallkill (4-0 in the league) is a win over Boonton (3-1) away from winning its first outright divisional championship since the school opened 42 years ago. 

“A good look for the school,” Accardi said. “Definitely.”

Rookie coach Jim Hamill’s team clinched a share of its first divisional title since 2018, when the team shared the league title with Newton. That is the only other time in school history that Wallkill has won or shared a division title.

So when Boonton comes to town Saturday afternoon, everything will be at stake. Hardyston will be rocking.

Without Accardi’s contributions, the team might have been on the 

outside looking in yet again.

Last year, he didn’t envision much playing time, so he decided to put away his shoulder pads for good, get a job, and get on with his life. He did land a job (Tony’s Pizzeria in Hardyston) but dearly missed the sport he’d played since his flag football days.

So he returned and has been a valued contributor from Day One. He had his best game against Whippany, when he caught four passes for 76 yards, including the biggest catch of his life, which coincided with Clarken’s keen, on-field awareness of what Whippany’s defense had been doing. 

With time winding down under a minute in the fourth quarter, Coach Jim Hamill told Clarken and the offense that they had one last play before they would try a field goal to win it with under 30 seconds remaining.

Clarken made the most of his opportunity.

“I saw the guy on Ryder,” Clarken (17 for 29, 154 yards, 2 TDs). “He was lined up and I told Ryder to press outside on the guy. (The defender’s) hips were flipped, so I told Ryder to go inside. I said that pre-play in the huddle. They were coming up and playing man.”

The play turned out just as Clarken had envisioned.   

“I dropped back and saw no safety over the top,” Clarken said. “Coach Hamill told me I had one shot and to go for it. I saw Ryder and threw it. Perfect pass. Perfect catch.”

“I have faith in Zack,” Accardi said. “I knew he’d find the right receiver at the right time.”

This time, it happened to be Accardi.

“I saw him downfield, chucked it up and hoped he caught it,” Clarken said. “He was wide open.”

Accardi caught just one pass all season coming into the Whippany game (a touchdown in a 28-6 Week 3 win over Kinnelon). Even though he hadn’t been targeted much this year, he decided to be patient.

“I was just waiting for my time to come and I knew it would,” he said. 

Ironically enough, the play was ok’d by Hamill and called by Dan Rosanelli, whose calling card as a player was blocking for some of Vic Paternostro’s great teams at Pope John back in the day – teams that were notoriously run-happy.

Talk about irony.

“Dan called a perfect play,” Hamill said. “Whippany was paying attention to our two big receivers (Connor Hoebee and Ethan Alfonso) and ignored Ryder. Zack hit him in stride.”

The Clarken-to-Accardi duo connected in the third quarter to tie it on a 34-yard touchdown pass at the end of the third quarter. 

“We were inept all game,” Hamill said. “Ryder made an unbelievable catch on the first touchdown. We took shots earlier and Zack overthrew 3-4 big plays. We had one receiver drop one in end zone on the same play we ran to win the game. Ryder did a helluva job squeezing the ball and scored. That gave us energy.” 

The Rangers defense did the rest by posting a second-half shutout. Hamill was worried about a Whippany offense that had piled up a whopping 42 points in the second half in beating North Warren last week.

But the ‘D’ has matured a whole lot faster than he envisioned.

“We were concerned being on a short week,” he said. “Whippany has some explosive players. One of our Kryptonites is we are undersized. We did not have a full offseason in the weight room. We battle against size and strength levels compared to other schools.”

But the defense does an excellent job of tackling and flowing to the football with Jack Carr, Matt Carr and Pope John transfer Joe Pallay up front, linebackers Johnny Cammarata, Joey Macaro, Andrew Barta and Jack Van Eeuwen, and DBs Alfonso, Luke Bolich, Clarken, Travis Snyder, and Kellan Brown shoring up the secondary.

When Hamill took the job at the end of February, he wondered if he’d had enough weapons on ‘D’. 

“I was concerned,” he said. “A lot of guys didn’t return and other guys needed to prove themselves.”

Hamill has run the defense and has gotten invaluable help up in the box from assistant Dan Tomczak.

Clarken, meanwhile, has made terrific strides as a leader, as evidenced by him drawing up the final play for Accardi.

“We have asked him to do a lot,” Hamill said. “He has grown. When you watch the film from last year, his stats came off big plays, Zack would throw it and the kid would run underneath it. We RPO it a lot and he does well on his feet (Clarken has rushed for 418 and passed for 1,066 yards). He has taken the roll of quarterback and run with it. He has shown a lot of growth. He could be a defensive player on the next level but could play QB on the next level. He is making a case.”

He sure did in the second half, and especially with the game on the line.

“The past few games, it has been Connor and Ethan but Ryder was open,” Clarken said. “Gotta show him the love.”

“We have played together our whole lives and always had that connection on and off the field,” Accardi added. “Friends forever.”

A win over Boonton on Saturday, and the relationship will be even stronger.

And a good look for Wallkill. Definitely.