Two of New Jersey's most electrifying running backs, Pope John's Jeremy Tucker and Hopatcong's Joe Martinek, will face off Saturday and give SCIL coaches a glimpse of what they'll be up against

BY JOE HOFMANN
DAILY RECORD

HOPATCONG -- Strap yourselves in for the 2006 high school football season, SCIL fans. There may never be another fall quite like it.

Get ready for some jet-quick moves, a little shake-and-bake here, a burst of speed there, and a league full of faked-out, helpless defenders.

And it all starts Saturday afternoon.

On your mark ...

Hopatcong's Joe Martinek and Pope John's Jeremy Tucker are both first-team All-State running back candidates who combined for 5,010 yards and 62 touchdowns last year. Both are rarely brought down by one man, lightning fast, and bring a unique blend of slickness, explosiveness and electricity with them on every single carry.

Both start the season squaring off at Pope John at 1 p.m.

Get ready ...

"The fans in the SCIL and the coaches should enjoy these two," Lenape Valley coach Don Smolyn raved.

Get set ...

"The SCIL won't be boring, not this year," Pope John coach Vic Paternostro added.

Go...

"It'll be a long time before you see two of this quality again," Smolyn said. "These are two special players. They are first-team All-State players in a 10-team league. It'll be a long time before you see something like this again."

The two runners stormed through the league last year, leading their respective teams to a shared SCIL championship. Martinek (2,508 yards, 28 TDs) went on to lead the Chiefs to the Section 1, Group II title and was first-team All-State.

Tucker, meanwhile, rushed for 2,502 yards and 34 touchdowns as Pope John reached the state Non-Group III playoffs before losing to eventual seven-time champion St. Joseph-Montvale in the semifinals. He was second-team All-State.

Both spent all of last fall using their superior speed to simply blow past defenses. Martinek (6-0, 195) would find a hole, make one move, and fly through the opening -- many times leaving a cloud of dust between him and defensive backs. Tucker (5-9, 180) juked his way through the line and then was a blur streaking through defenses.

How good are they? Well, Martinek and Tucker are both of that rare breed of greatness, where defenses can actually do everything correctly and still get burned.

"They are totally different ballplayers,"Paternostro said. "Martinek is a bigger kid and stronger. Jeremy is quicker."

Said Hopatcong coach Paul Reduzzi, "Joe is more of a runner where he makes one move, he commits and he goes. Jeremy is more shake and bake."

Martinek gave Rutgers a verbal commitment over Vanderbilt, Florida International and West Virginia.

Tucker, a Dover resident, is entertaining offers from Temple, North Carolina, Wake Forest and UConn. Miami, Michigan, Boston College and Virginia are all actively recruiting him.

Both were standouts dating way back to grade school. The one time they faced off before high school, Martinek's Hopatcong team dominated Tucker's Dover team on the way to the league championship four years ago.

Both were immediate contributors on their respective high school varsities.

Martinek rushed for 1,303 yards as a freshman, including 350 yards against Lenape Valley in a 49-28 Lenape victory. It didn't take him long to make a believer out of Smolyn, who has been coaching in Sussex County for 31 years.

"We kept scoring in six or eight plays and he'd score in one," Smolyn said. "I thought we were better that day, but he kept them in the game. They used him out of the single wing and he kept running the ball. We couldn't stop him, we could not tackle him and we couldn't catch him."

Tucker played a great deal at now-defunct Bayley-Ellard but didn't run the ball nearly as much as Martinek because of the presence of All-Area standout Kareem Huggins, now at Hofstra. Tucker ran for 1,000 yards as a sophomore before Bayley closed.

When that happened, he immediately considered playing for Paternostro. Tucker saw how often his friend Jason Harper carried the ball -- Harper was the 2004 Daily Record All-Area Player of the Year --and decided to attend the Sparta school.

"It was a whole new offense for me," Tucker said. "The coaches at Pope John are more experienced than any I've had. Coach P let me know about the whole process. He'll always be there for me."

It's the least Paternostro could do.

"He means so much to us," the coach said. "His running ability and pass catching ability give defenses a whole lot of headaches."

Paternostro wants defenses to have even more of those, so he has decided to spread his offense out. Pope John plans on throwing the ball more this fall with senior quarterback Eugene McGuire, a three-year starter.

Defenses packed eight men in the box too often against Tucker and the Lions. Paternostro wants to put a stop to it.

"If you go with a bit of a run-and-shoot offense and have Jeremy Tucker as your tailback, what do you do?" he asked. "You can't put eight in the box, the way the offense is set up. If you want to, go ahead. We're not talking about the old Pope John, with no passing attack. This is the new Pope John, which is not afraid to throw. The Good Lord tapped me on the shoulder one day and told me last year, 'You're getting old and you have to change.'"

That chance might present even more problems for the SCIL. Imagine Tucker flying through a spread-out defense.

"Tucker is faster than Martinek," Smolyn said. "He is a college tailback in the I-formation. He is like a Reggie Bush at our level. He gets a tiny crease and it doesn't even need to be a big one. We had him on third-and-12 on his own 15-16 yard line and pinned in with three players near the sideline. He went 88 yards. He made a couple of jukes and our kids were all on the ground. We knew the play was coming. We had it defensed fairly well and he was gone."

Said Martinek of Tucker, "He's great, with great speed, strength and vision. He plays for a great team and a great coaching staff, just like I do. If you take one play off, he's gone. You take one play off, and he'll score."

Martinek was one of many two-way players who thrived for Hopatcong last year.

This year, Reduzzi has opted to use fewer players and have veterans go both ways. One of those players, of course, is Martinek, who is also an able linebacker.

"I think there is a little more pressure on us this year," Martinek said. "No one thinks we're as good as last year, but we have the potential to be as good."

Martinek might be even better, which is one of his personal goals every year.

"I always try to match what I did the previous season while I've been here, and it's worked so far,"he said. "I've gotten myself into better shape. I got my speed time down in the 40."

Both know how far they'd run without blockers opening up running room.

"You're nothing if you don't have the supporting cast," Martinek said.

Added Tucker, "I love leading the team to victory, but the line helps me a lot and so do the guys on the sideline. They're all awesome."

Very few runners can do what Martinek and Tucker can with those blocks. That's why both figure to pile a whole lot more yards and touchdowns before the season is over.

And that's why 2006 figures to be a wild, wild season in the SCIL.

On your mark ...