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Taulane is doing it all for Collingswood football team

Mike Taulane has good statistics. He has run for 471 yards. He has averaged 7.2 yards per carry and scored eight touchdowns.

Mike Taulane has good statistics.

He has run for 471 yards. He has averaged 7.2 yards per carry and scored eight touchdowns.

He has made 69 tackles. He has averaged 13.8 stops in the course of Collingswood High School's five-game winning streak.

But as impressive as those numbers might be, they don't define Taulane on the football field. The senior fullback and linebacker plays with instinctive feel for the sport that can be neither taught nor measured.

"It's just the way he flows to the football," Collingswood coach Jack McConnell said. "He's just an instinctive football player."

Cinnaminson coach Mario Patrizi said Taulane has a "great nose for the football."

The 5-foot-10, 190-pound Taulane was credited with 17 tackles in Collingswood's signature victory of the season, a 12-8 triumph over a Cinnaminson team that entered the Oct. 14 game with a 5-0 record and the No. 15 spot in the Inquirer Top 25.

And a few of those stops came with Cinnaminson inside the Collingswood 10-yard line late in the game.

"Very instinctive player," Patrizi said. "He made some huge stops at the goal line in our game. He never seemed to come off the field."

Collingswood (5-1), the No. 21 team in the rankings, will visit No. 24 Willingboro (5-2) on Friday. Both teams have won five in a row and are angling for berths in the South Jersey Group 2 tournament.

"It's going to be a tough game," Taulane said. "They're a good team. But I love the way we're playing right now. We're the team we thought we could be."

Taulane said he has been playing football since he was 5, first for the Oaklyn Cougars and then for Collingswood when the town reinstituted its youth program.

A top wrestler who won the Region 7 title at 170 pounds as a junior, Taulane hopes to play football in college.

"I just love the sport of football," Taulane said. "I just love being out there."

Taulane was a starting linebacker and backup fullback as a junior. He's starting on both sides of the ball this season, rarely leaving the field.

"I like it that way," Taulane said. "I want to stay out there and make plays."

Taulane didn't play in Collingswood's first game, a loss to Haddonfield. In the Panthers' winning streak, he has reached double digits in tackles in every game and scored a touchdown in every game as well.

"We like to spread the ball around, keep everybody fresh," McConnell said of the team's offensive philosophy. "But Mike is a hard runner. He gets in the end zone."

Taulane said the Panthers' "confidence is sky high" heading into the crucial stretch of the season - Friday's trip to Willingboro, a home game with 6-0 West Deptford on Nov. 4, and then a likely playoff opener on the weekend of Nov. 11-12.

"It just feels like things are clicking," Taulane said. "Our practices are clean, crisp. We feel like we're getting better every week."

panastasia@phillynews.com

@PhilAnastasia

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