Ground game leads Jets past Baldwin

East Meadow turned one minor special teams adjustment into a major difference-maker and pulled away from Baldwin in a 28-7 Conference I win last Saturday.

A 97-yard kickoff return by sophomore Treyvon Mask in the second quarter forced the Jets (5-2) to change up their special-teams approach, and the decision to squib second-half kickoffs rather than boom them deep had game-changing results “We’ve gotten beaten twice by them on a play like that,” East Meadow coach Vin Mascia said of the return score which began when Mask streaked across the field and took a handoff from senior Tyler Harper, and mirrored a similar play that knocked the Jets out of the playoffs last season. “It was a great job by them, and a bad job by us.”

After junior Robbie Healy capped a seven-play, 65-yard drive with a 1-yard touchdown that broke a 7-7 tie, senior Hector Guerrero’s second squib kick of the third quarter bounced off the chest of a Baldwin player and was recovered by the Jets at midfield. Six plays later, Healy hit paydirt from five yards out and East Meadow led, 21-7. “We got caught and decided to squib,” Mascia said. “Every once in a while you get lucky and hit a guy. Us scoring, getting the ball back and scoring again was the difference.”

Senior Shin Shun Kang had three carries for 23 yards in the first half, but he burst out of intermission with runs of 16, 14 and 10 yards on the first possession of the third quarter and finished with a team high 121 yards on the ground. He also closed out the scoring in the fourth quarter when he blazed his way to the end zone untouched on a 28-yard run. “The offensive line really came together and played a good football game,” Mascia said. “We were able to run the ball and hit a couple of spots that we like to think of as strengths of ours.”