Check out the recaps for SOL football teams in action Saturday. Pennridge/CB East photos provided courtesy of Kim Supko Photography. Check back for a gallery of photos.
SOL National
PENNRIDGE 42, CENTRAL BUCKS EAST 0
“Our kids believe.”
Just three words, but listening to coach Cody Muller tell it, that’s been the secret to the Rams’ dazzling start to the season.
“My hat’s off to our seniors – to every single one of them,” the Rams’ coach said. “They’re doing an awesome job being leaders.”
Shane Hartzell is one of those senior leaders.
“There’s 22 of us, and that’s about one-third of the team,” the senior captain said. “We grew up playing peewee football together all the way to now. I think we have a lot of natural leaders in our senior class. With that, it really gives us the extra edge as we’re already very close to each other.
“We’re really a family this year. Last year we were playing kind of selfish, this year we’re playing very selfless. We’re playing for each other, we have each other’s backs, and we all really believe. We believe we can get it done and we do.”
On Saturday afternoon, the visiting Rams won for the third time in as many games, equaling their win total for last year’s entire season, but that doesn’t begin to tell the story of their dominance. In three games, Pennridge has outscored its opponents 107-14 – 72-0 in the last two. They have not allowed a point in nine consecutive quarters.
Hartzell, for one, is not surprised.
“We have high expectations for ourselves,” the Villanova-bound linebacker said. “We set the bar very high, and we planned to go undefeated this season. Having the shutout – that’s just icing on the cake.”
For Hartzell – sidelined most of last season with an injury – the season has been particularly gratifying.
“Playing only two games last year and watching our team suffer – that was terrible,” he said. “Coming back and having a season when we might not have one, it doesn’t get better than that. It’s like a story you’d see in a movie – coming back from a bad season, all this pandemic stuff. It’s really working out for us.
“We’re going to continue to work hard and tackle anything that comes our way.”
Saturday’s win came on the heels of a 30-0 win over a Neshaminy squad that had defeated North Penn a week earlier.
“We knew Neshaminy returned a lot, and we knew they were good, but all year we’ve been preaching – if we play together, we can get anything done,” Hartzell said. “We played together just like we’ve been practicing all year. It wasn’t a shock to us. We expected the outcome to be what it was because that’s how we’ve been playing all year.”
On Saturday, the Rams kicked off to open the game, the defense held, and the Rams marched down the field for the score. It was a scenario that was repeated again and again Saturday.
“It wasn’t the prettiest game, by any means,” Muller said. “It was a little sloppy here and there, but overall, the effort of our kids was great.”
Elias Dantzler – who was all-conference as a slot wide receiver last year – scored a pair of touchdowns and was one of many catalysts on offense.
“This is actually the first year he played running back even throughout midgets and everything like that, so he’s doing a great job for us,” Muller said of Dantzler. “Today was his chance to shine a little bit. We run the ball, that’s our thing. Little bits and chunks at a time.
“Our kids do a great job. One of the things we talk about as coaches is how selfless our players are. They’re never, ‘Me, me, me,’ trying to get the ball here and there. They do a great job of sharing the load. They’re happy for each other to do well. This game it was Elias doing a great job running the football.”
The Patriots, who were without standout quarterback Anthony Giordano (injury), never could get untracked against a Pennridge defense that dominated from start to finish.
“Our defensive line just played fast and physical. They did a great job – Travis Washington and Jake Tarburton at D-ends and Ryan Gallagher, our freshman nose guard,” Muller said. “The four linebackers behind them are four awesome kids – Jack Ferguson, Shane Hartzell, Phil Picciotti and Logan McGowan.
“Again, it comes back to the fact that our guys are very selfless, team-oriented and doing a great job of just doing their job, not trying to do too much. They trust each other, they believe in each other. They’re doing a great job, and our defensive coaches are doing a phenomenal job of putting them in the best position.”
Offensively, the Rams scored early and often, opening up a 21-0 halftime lead and adding to that in the second half.
“Offensively, it’s not really a single person, it’s a team effort and just sharing the load of the football,” Muller said. “It’s been great. My big thing is just the whole offensive team as a unit is doing great.
“I always give credit to coach (John) Donnelly because it’s always tough to play on a Saturday at East. He always has those kids ready to go, so our guys did a good job, again bringing some energy in kind of an empty stadium, which is tough, but our guys find a way.”
Pennridge (3-0) will celebrate Senior Night/Homecoming when the Rams host Central Bucks South on Friday. It is the Rams’ first home game of the season. Central Bucks East (1-2) will host North Penn on Saturday at 1 p.m.
Pennridge 7-14-14-7 42
Central Bucks East 0-0-0-0 0
SOL American
WISSAHICKON 34, NEW HOPE-SOLEBURY 31 (OT)
The situation looked hopeless.
Trailing by 10 points and just 1:30 showing on the scoreboard clock, the visiting Trojans would need a miracle to pull Saturday’s game out. Defying the odds, they got one, scoring a touchdown, recovering an on-sides kick and then sending the game into overtime when – with seven seconds remaining – Nate DeVincent split the uprights with the game-tying field goal. All of this in a 90-second span they’ll be talking about for a long time.
Riding the momentum of that remarkable comeback, the Trojans won it in overtime on another DeVincent field goal.
“As I was telling my coaches at the end of it, three years ago when I took over as head coach, this is the type of game we would have lost,” Wissahickon coach Bruce Fleming said. “We would have fallen apart, it would have been a blowout.
“This year, the senior class realizes – we’ve got to keep our composure, we’ve got to keep fighting, we’ve got to keep working together. This is what I call one of those program-changing wins where the seniors are showing my underclassmen what it takes to win games on Friday night, and this is one of those wins.”
The game appeared to be over after a three-yard touchdown run by NHS quarterback Phil Weinseimer gave the host Lions a 31-21 lead with 1:30 remaining in regulation. Instead, the stage was set for the Trojans’ improbable comeback.
“We gave up a score on fourth down to put them up 10,” Fleming said. ”One of the things I always tell my guys – the game is never over when you play the Trojans because we’re going to find a way to fight back to the very end.
“We came back out offensively, and we were able to move the ball downfield.”
Highlighting the drive was a long run by sophomore Kyle Lehman, and one play later quarterback Aidan Defeo found EJ Schreiner for a touchdown from five yards out. The drive took all of 43 seconds, leaving the Trojans with the not-so-little matter of recovering an on-sides kick.
“It’s something we work on in practice,” Fleming said. “One of our practice days, we spend a good 5-10 minutes working on on-sides kicks.
“In our Upper Dublin game, we came close to getting an on-sides kick, but we just missed it, so we made an adjustment after that, and we started perfecting it. My punter, Bobby Haasz, is very good at on-sides kicks. He’s perfected the double bounce that’s needed to get the right pop up. The adjustment we made for my guys that recover was good.”
Haasz delivered, and with seven seconds remaining, Nate DeVincent easily cleared a 29-yard field goal.
“We got close to try and score a touchdown to win it, but at that point, we kicked a field goal,” Fleming said. “Going into overtime, all the coaches told the guys, ‘Look, we have the momentum right now. Everything is on us. We go to overtime, we win the game.’ That was our mindset, that was the kids’ mindset.
“Defensively, we turned it around in the second half, so we knew if we won the toss, we would go on defense to set the tone.”
The Trojans won the toss and stonewalled the Lions – who went for the touchdown on fourth-and-goal.
“Their quarterback ran on third down and got to the five-yard-line,” Fleming said. “They bring their offense right back out. I told my guys – ‘We know what they’re going to do, they’re going to try and run the quarterback. If not, he’s going to hand it off to this kid, and my guys stayed home and made the play.”
On their first possession of OT, the Trojans won it when DeVincent nailed a 27-yard field goal.
Big plays were the norm in a contest the Trojans trailed 21-7 at the end of one quarter. For the Lions, Joey Capriotti scored on a 20-yard TD run, and after the Trojans knotted the score, Weinseimer found Dylan Hildebrandt with an 18-yard touchdown pass to put the Lions on top with 6:19 remaining in the first. A Weinseimer touchdown run of 18 yards in the closing seconds put the Lions on top 21-7. They led the rest of the way until the Trojans knotted the scored in the closing seconds of regulation.
Fleming lauded the efforts of his players in the come-from-behind win.
“Kyle Lehman had a great game tonight,” the Trojans’ coach said. “He had a lot of great runs. Without looking at the film, I would say he had over 150 yards and two touchdowns.
“Aidan Defeo at quarterback made some smart decisions and some clutch throws to EJ Schreiner to Kyle Lehman to Marice Johnson to all of my receivers.
“Offensive line-wise, the entire unit had a great night. Adam Grossman made his first varsity start tonight, Kareem Roberts, Jake Federer, Michael Fath and Shayne Lynch. They controlled the line of scrimmage for us offensively once we got rolling to create the holes that Kyle was able to hit and run the ball. Some of those guys played on both sides of the ball.”
Lehman finished the game with 164 yards and a touchdown on 18 carries. Defeo was 10-for-15 for 115 yards and two TDs. Schreiner, who had a rushing TD, caught four passes for 69 yards and a touchdown. Johnson also had a touchdown reception.
Wissahickon (2-1, 2-0 SOL) will travel to William Tennent on Friday, and New Hope-Solebury (1-2) will host Academy of the New Church in a non-league game Friday.
Wissahickon 7-7-0-14-3 34
New Hope-Solebury 21-3-0-7-0 31
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