Williamstown

At the conclusion of Delsea's easy 28-0 Tri-County Conference Royal Division win over Williamstown yesterday, coach John Oberg was hoisted on his players' shoulders and carried off the field in triumph. This was no ordinary opening-day victory. The win was the 200th career triumph in South Jersey for Oberg, the only head coach in the 30-year history of Delsea football. Although it was Oberg's 200th career win in South Jersey, his overall record stands at a remarkable 209-60-5.

Both the Williamstown girls' volleyball team and junior Krissy Collins have done well recently on her birthday. Two years ago, the Braves won the state Group 3 title on Nov. 11. Yesterday, fourth- seeded Williamstown advanced to the state Group 4 semifinals by beating fifth-seeded Rancocas Valley in three games. To top it off, Collins scored the final two points in the third game, which Williamstown won, 25-18. "It's always been pretty lucky, 11/11," said Collins, who turned 17 yesterday.

Williamstown coach Frank Fucetola said he was "exhausted" after the longest season of his coaching career. "Give him a week, he'll be fine," Monroe Township superintendent Charles Earling said after Fucetola led Williamstown to a 43-20 victory over Southern Regional in the South Jersey Group 5 title game Friday night at Rowan. Fucetola plans to retire from teaching on Feb. 1. What does that mean for his future as a coach? "I just want to enjoy this," Fucetola said after Friday's game.

Form has held through the early rounds of the Group 4 girls' volleyball tournament. But now Williamstown needs to upset the order. The fourth-seeded Braves play top-seeded Southern Regional today at 7 p.m. in the second game of a state-semifinals doubleheader at Hillsborough. Second-seeded Hunterdon Central plays third-seeded Bridgewater-Raritan in the opener at 5:30 p.m. With the top four seeds advancing, there have been few surprises in the Group 4 tournament. But Williamstown needs to spring one. "We know they are the favorite, but it's great to still be competing at this point of the season," Williamstown coach Chris Sheppard said.

That Williamstown vs. Glassboro football game won't happen next season after all. Williamstown will instead play at Paramus Catholic, a Non-Public 4 program in Bergen County, Braves athletic director Paul Deal confirmed earlier this week. The game is scheduled for Oct. 10 at 2 p.m. "We'll probably do an overnight trip," Deal said. "It should be a good game. " In place of a matchup with Group 4 Williamstown, Glassboro will play Group 3 Kingsway. That game will be Friday, Nov. 6, according to Kingsway athletic director Joe Galleria.

Some softball teams have a handful of key players. Washington Township coach Tracy Burkhart has key players on her team. She just thinks she has more than a handful. "Right now, I think they're all key players," Burkhart said after a 15-0 win over Williamstown on Friday. "It's not just necessarily one through four or whatever. One through nine is hitting the ball, and they're scoring. " That total team effort showed in the Minutemaids' four-inning, 15-run-rule win over the Braves.

Kyle Jenkins provided the highlight. Williamstown had trouble providing the high lights. Jenkins, Deptford's flash of a quarterback, bolted 82 yards early in the first quarter of his team's 18-7 victory at Williamstown last night. That seemed like a lock for the most memorable event of the evening. It was a distant second. With 31 seconds left in the third quarter and Deptford (5-3, 4-2 Tri-County Royal) leading by 12-7, the stadium went dark. The scoreboard was on and the press-box lights were on, but for 15 minutes, the game was off. Apparently an accident in the town had caused high-voltage lights around Williamstown to go off, including those at a nearby department store and supermarket.

In the old days, Thanksgiving was the perfect time to play the perfect football game. November still is a good month to make it happen, and the first weekend in December is even better. But the second week of September? A full seven days before the end of summer? If things go according to plan, Williamstown will have 10 more chances to play as well as it performed Friday night. But the Braves can only hope to bottle some of their mid-September magic, to shake well and break open come the start of the South Jersey Group 5 playoffs.

The Gloucester Catholic girls' basketball team jumped out to a 35-24 lead against Williamstown last night. The Rams were scoring at will, playing excellent defense, and outhustling the Braves. In other words, everything pointed to a comeback. When these teams played on Jan. 9, Gloucester Catholic erupted for a similarly large halftime lead, only to see it squirt away as Williamstown pulled out a 47-46 thriller. Last night, there was no comeback, and there was no thriller.

For teams searching for a positive end to disappointing seasons, Williamstown and Washington Township High had an opportunity to leave everything on the field in the inaugural Thanksgiving game between these neighboring communities. That motivation was most evident with a little less than 5 minutes to play as Williamstown senior Harry Ulmer willed his way to the bottom of a pile and came away with a loose ball. "The only thing on my mind was get that ball," the senior said. "I guess deep down I knew it could be my last play or at least the last really important play I could make for Williamstown.

Clearview senior Dave Young delivered the game's biggest hit in a 12-2 victory over GCIT on Wednesday. But that wasn't what most impressed GCIT coach John Marcucci. "That kid is the epitome of a leader," Marcucci said of Young. "In the field, you hear him talking to his outfielders and infielders on every pitch. In the dugout, you hear him talking to the other hitters. "He's such a spark plug. " Young made the most noise with his bat, rapping a two-out, three-run double into the gap in left-center field in the second inning to send the Pioneers on their way to an important victory in a Tri-County Royal game that was shortened to six innings.

Jake Goffredi started to clear the fences as soon as he stopped swinging for the fences. "Something clicked this weekend," said Goffredi, a junior first baseman for Williamstown. "My coach [Jim Ambrosius] has been telling me I've been putting too much pressure on myself, trying to do too much. "I finally relaxed. " On Saturday, Goffredi was 3 for 3 with a pair of solo home runs and three runs scored in a 6-3 win over Cherry Hill East in the first round of the Papa Bear Tournament at Delran.

Some softball teams have a handful of key players. Washington Township coach Tracy Burkhart has key players on her team. She just thinks she has more than a handful. "Right now, I think they're all key players," Burkhart said after a 15-0 win over Williamstown on Friday. "It's not just necessarily one through four or whatever. One through nine is hitting the ball, and they're scoring. " That total team effort showed in the Minutemaids' four-inning, 15-run-rule win over the Braves.

A Williamstown man was accused of defrauding mortgage lenders and the government by acting as a straw buyer in a multimillion-dollar mortgage fraud conspiracy involving $20 million in loans and 100 houses, most of them in Philadelphia, the U.S. Attorney's office in Philadelphia said Tuesday. According to federal documents, Mark Murphy, 47, allowed his identity to be used, along with false information about him, including false pay records, to qualify and receive a $324,000 loan on a West Philadelphia property.

Six batters into the first start of his final high school baseball season, Delsea's Nick Freijomil trailed by a 2-0 score. In the dugout, Delsea coach Tom Carney looked at his ace righthander. He liked what he saw. "He didn't flinch," Carney said. "That's senior leadership. " Freijomil didn't get the win as Delsea rallied in dramatic fashion for a 3-2 victory over Williamstown on Wednesday in the season opener for the Tri-County Conference Royal Division rivals. But the 6-foot-4 pitcher, a Long Island University recruit, set the stage for the Crusaders' late-game heroics by shutting down the Braves' potent lineup after the first inning.

Delsea pitcher Nick Freijomil looks back at the victory over Williamstown. www.philly.com/ rallyvideos

Six batters into the first start of his final high school baseball season, Delsea's Nick Freijomil trailed by a 2-0 score. In the dugout, Delsea coach Tom Carney looked at his ace righthander. He liked what he saw. "He didn't flinch," Carney said. "That's senior leadership. " Freijomil didn't get the win as Delsea rallied in dramatic fashion for a 3-2 victory over Williamstown on Wednesday in the season opener for the Tri-County Conference Royal Division rivals. But the 6-foot-4 pitcher, a Long Island University recruit, set the stage for the Crusaders' late-game heroics by shutting down the Braves' potent lineup after the first inning.

Instead of telling authorities about the dead woman he said he discovered in his bathroom, a 41-year-old Williamstown man drove about 10 miles with the body in the backseat of her car before abandoning the vehicle and her corpse on a residential street in Berlin Township, authorities said. Andrew McCloskey, of the 600 block of Riviera Drive, has been charged with the illegal disposal of a body, the Gloucester County Prosecutor's Office announced Tuesday According to authorities, McCloskey met the 40-year-old Atco woman in January 2012 and she went home with him to the unit block of Harrell Avenue in Williamstown.