By TOM WILLIAMS

The Ocean City High School football season ended last Thursday.

That seems unusual for the first week in November but such is the structure of high school football in New Jersey in 2023.

The Raiders finished 3-7 which seems like a disappointment. But consider that seven of the eight teams on the Raiders’ regular season schedule qualified for the playoffs and reached the sectional semi-finals. And five of them will play for championships this weekend.

You could make a pretty good argument that this was the most challenging football schedule in school history.

That is what the players on this team will remember when they look back – the quality teams they faced and the talented players whom they will next get to watch on ESPN or another sports networks in the years ahead.

The players on this OCHS team played hard, challenging some of these highly-ranked teams they faced the last 11 weeks. They should all be proud of their efforts. Those who return next season will probably face a much more reasonable schedule.

But three players who wrote their names prominently into OCHS football history will not be back next year. And they left some impressive numbers.

Duke Guenther played two seasons for the Raiders and ran for 1,423 yards, the 16th highest recorded total in school history. He passed four members of the OCHS Sports Hall of Fame in career yards along the way – Leon Brown, Doug Colman, Josh Baker and Andy Jernee. He carried the ball 328 times and scored 13 touchdowns, also catching 32 passes for another 274 yards and making 63 tackles.

“Duke is a throwback player,” said head coach Kevin Smith. “He reminds me of some of the guys I grew up with. I think Duke would play a game in the parking lot of that’s what we asked him to do. He has a love of the game that is hard to find these days and, as the son of a coach, he studies it like few kids his age. Duke was a workhorse we could give the ball to 20 times a game and he’d produce. The thing I liked about him most was he wanted the ball in big situations with the game in the balance. That’s the sign of a great competitor.”

Nick Layton was involved in 262 tackles in his career. In the last 20 years, only one player (Brandon Lin 279) had more. Sadly, tackles were not recorded consistently throughout the 20th century. He also recorded eight sacks, tied for eighth with Mike Rhodes, Chugger LaCasse and Alex Iannone in the OCHS records. And he put these numbers together despite missing two games his junior year. Layton is also a successful wrestler, finishing third in both the district and region tournaments and winning twice in the state championship tournament.

“Nick will go down among the best defensive players in Ocean City history,” Coach Smith said. “He was a tackling machine at linebacker and he solved so many problems for us with his ability to get to the football. He had great instincts and a knack for evading or getting through blocks that is tough to teach. Nick finished in the Top 10 in the state in total tackles this past year, despite the fact we played just 10 games and had several games where running clocks were involved. He was the heart and soul of our football team.”

Jon Moyer did a little bit of everything. He accumulated 904 receiving yards, the seventh highest total in school history. Among those he passed this year were Chris Harris, Jack Hoag, Brandon Lashley and Matt Chila. The six ahead of him are Jake Schneider, Scott Lipford, Ray Rogers, Ryan Taylor, Rick Lipford and Mike Coccodrilli – an impressive list. He had 11 TD catches and is the only OCHS player on record to return three kickoffs for touchdowns, one each year. Plus, he had the 10th highest punt average recorded by an OCHS player.

“Jon is probably the best all-around athlete in the program since Joe Repetti,” Smith said. (Repetti, by the way, is the junior quarterback at Muhlenberg who has been named Centennial Conference Player of the Week four times this year.) Athletically, Jon was one of the few players we had who could match up with some of the skill players from schools like Millville and Winslow. Jon can do just about anything on a football field and, as he showed throughout his career, he can score from anywhere. His versatility allowed us to get creative with our schemes and caused a lot of headaches for our opponents. He will be tough to replace.”

There were other seniors on this team who made an impact – among them were Justin Gooden, Charlie Schutta, Ryan Callahan, Roy Salugta, Ryder Hay, Brendan Bergman, Noah Quinn, Chase Russell and Talon Fischer.

But this trio has left behind numbers that indicate what impressive careers they had.

No. 1 (Jon Moyer), No. 3 (Nick Layton) and No. 5 (Duke Guenther) set standards that future players will be trying to match.