SOL Football District Wrap (11-12-21)

Quakertown & Plymouth Whitemarsh were winners in District One Tournament action Friday. North Penn/Ridley photos provided courtesy of Keith Clemens Photography. PW/Upper Dublin photos provided by Kim Supko. Check back for galleries of both games. CB West/Garnet Valley photo courtesy of Jesse Garber. Quakertown photos provided courtesy of Jennifer Banas/Quakertown football.

Stats provided courtesy of Intelligencer/Courier. For additional football stats and coverage, visit the Intelligencer (https://www.theintell.com/sports/high-school) and Courier Times (https://www.buckscountycouriertimes.com/sports/high-school/)

CLASS 5A Quarterfinals

#5 PLYMOUTH WHITEMARSH 42, #4 UPPER DUBLIN 36 (OT)

Tommy Hannon powered his way into the endzone, stood up with a flex of his muscles and a roar deep from his lungs and then wandered around trying to find someone to hug before the mob of teammates, cheerleaders and more from his sideline engulfed him.

It’s been a difficult year for the junior running back/linebacker, with injuries limiting his effectiveness on the field. Friday night, in a barnburner of a District 1 quarterfinal, Hannon came up with what he exclaimed as the best game of his life as the Colonials came up with the last stop and the last score to keep their season alive.

“We didn’t want this to be our last game, we didn’t deserve this to be our last game,” said Hannon, who rushed for three scores. “Us as teammates, we believed in each other. We’re brothers who started working for this all summer.”

PW and UD share the same SOL conference in every sport except football, but that doesn’t mean there’s any less of a rivalry there.

Upper Dublin, the defending District 1 5A champion, left all it had on the field. The Cardinals got off to a good start when they stood up PW’s offense for a fourth down stop on their own seven-yard line and immediately began moving down the field.

Aiden O’Brien, the Colonials’ do-it-all quarterback on offense, had his running game mostly bottled up by the Upper Dublin defense, but he was right behind Hannon in terms of big plays on Friday. His first would come on the defensive side, jumping a short slant by UD’s Colin O’Sullivan and taking it 64 yards to the house for a pick-six and a 7-0 lead.

“That definitely gave us the momentum to start,” said O’Brien, who plays linebacker on defense. “I saw it in practice a lot and from watching film, I was able to read the quarterback and get to the ball.”

“I really thought we were rolling after that, but (UD is) a great team and they were able to get back in the game. It was crazy.”

The Colonials’ offense isn’t built to throw the ball much, and to that end, O’Brien only threw five passes on Friday, but he made the most of them. His first pass also went for six, hitting sophomore Luke Winterbottom for a 53-yard score with 27 seconds left in the first quarter to put the No. 5 seed ahead 14-0.

Winterbottom had a rushing touchdown later and was one of a very long list of players for the Colonials who rose to the moment and made one or more winning plays.

Upper Dublin responded to start the second quarter when O’Sullivan found Chris Kohlbrenner for a 25-yard touchdown. The Cardinals’ junior quarterback put up outstanding numbers in the setback, hitting on 22-of-40 passes for 224 yards and three touchdowns.

Hannon, who played virtually every snap at linebacker, rushed 11 times for 99 yards including a 32-yard rush for a touchdown that put PW ahead 21-7 with 9:57 left in the third quarter.

Upper Dublin responded with a nice scoring drive keyed by O’Sullivan, who capped it on an 18-yard strike to senior Noah Lee, pulling the No. 4 seed within 21-14 at the end of three quarters. What was already a good playoff game would hit an entirely different level over the next 12 minutes.

“It was surreal, honestly,” Hannon said. “I don’t even know what else to say. It was just crazy.”

Winterbottom saw a hole and hit it to the tune of a 44-yard touchdown that gave PW a 28-14 advantage as part of a 250-yard team rushing effort. The sophomore had 54 yards on eight carries.

Down two scores and facing a 3rd-and-10 on their own 38, the Cardinals finally got on track. O’Sullivan made the throws and had several different receivers come up big as UD rallied back into the game. First up was Griffin Pensabene, who made a 24-yard grab to convert that first down and then had catches of 10 and nine yards on the drive before finishing it with an 11-yard TD.

Shaking off the early interception, O’Sullivan was the catalyst of Upper Dublin’s frantic fourth quarter comeback.

“That’s when I think he’s most comfortable out there, he rises to that kind of moment,” Stover said. “We just need the one play to get us going. We had the in-cut to Pensabene, the hitch, spin-out by (Brett) Callahan. High school football is momentum and you felt it all come on our side. Then as they’re going down, it’s all on their side. We needed to make one more play and just didn’t do it.”

Upper Dublin’s defense swarmed the Colonials on the next drive, stopping a run for no gain and the next two for loss to force a punt. Like their prior drive, the Cardinals used the pass to move down the field only this time, it was Brett Callahan making the big receptions.

“They started mixing up their pass plays,” PW senior safety Chris McLaughlin said. “It said a lot about the team there, a lot of teams would have put their heads down and called it a game. It’s easy to do that but our guys, they pushed through.”

Callahan had two key third down conversions, including a 25-yarder to get the ball down to the three. O’Sullivan rushed it in on the next snap, then Stover opted to roll the dice and go for two with 2:46 on the game clock. Again, it was Callahan who caught the two-point conversion from O’Sullivan and gave UD its first lead at 29-28.

If Stover needed any more proof momentum was in his favor, he got it on the next play. PW fumbled the first snap after the kickoff, which Hannon took the blame for by explaining he tried to squeeze the handoff too early, and the Cardinals recovered.

UD scored two plays later with 1:59 on the clock to go on top 36-28, and Stover admitted he thought about going for two again.

“It crossed my mind because you could end the game right there,” Stover said. “But our defense had been playing really well to that point and I thought we could keep them out and then we didn’t. I’ll second guess that, absolutely, that’s my job.”

Plymouth Whitemarsh had to go 63 yards in 112 seconds and did it by getting out of their comfort zone and throwing the ball. O’Brien, who was a running back before this season, stepped up and made two huge throws on the drive, both going to Hannon.

The junior back wouldn’t be denied either, fighting through tackles and carrying defenders for 18 and 27-yard gains down to the Cardinals’ 17-yard line.

“I wanted to play hard for my brothers, especially the seniors on our team,” Hannon said. “I’ve been playing with them since I came in as a freshman and I didn’t want them to go out like that.”

Still, even that wasn’t enough, and UD had the Colonials backed into a fourth and seven. O’Brien, who had no room to run all night, made some magic, somehow slipping out of a tackle in the backfield, reversing field and diving forward at the marker to pick up eight yards and move the sticks.

“Heart and fight is what I would call it, these guys never gave up,” Colonials coach Dan Chang said. “We go down by one, fumble the ball the next play and get scored on and these guys, you could see it in their eyes, they were ready to go and ready to fight.”

“It’s their ability to make things happen that showed on that last drive. We got guys breaking tackles all over the place, Aiden made a huge play on fourth down to extend it. It’s what they’ve been doing all season but I’m just really proud they finished that game.”

Hannon would finish the drive with a six-yard run coming with 13.3 on the game clock, leaving it all up to a two-point conversion.

O’Brien, who has put hours of work into becoming the on-field director of PW’s offense, said the drive embodied his team’s journey this season. It was the quarterback who got the call on the pivotal extra play and converted it to level the score 36-36.

“It was all heart, they’d stopped us a couple times in a row, we’d fumbled the first play of the last drive and we knew we had to get down and score. We were not letting our season end right there,” O’Brien said. “Going into that drive, I knew we had to throw the ball. We practice it and we’re ready to run those plays. I read my keys and knew I had to get in, so I wasn’t going down.”

Upper Dublin got the first crack on offense to start the overtime period and PW’s defense was able to force a fourth down from the nine. McLaughlin, who moved out of the quarterback role on offense to put more time into his job as safety, was right in on the coverage as UD’s pass to the end zone fell incomplete and opened the door for the Colonials to win the game.

“The team knew what we had to do, we had to get a stop there,” McLaughlin said. “I saw motion across, remembered something my coach taught me for that situation, did it and it ended up working out.”

O’Brien picked up the first seven yards to start PW’s overtime, then it was Hannon who brought it home.

“He runs hard, he hasn’t gotten many touches this year because he’s been banged up but he’s a dog on offense and a dog on defense,” O’Brien said.

Hannon admitted he wasn’t quite sure what to do after scoring, but he didn’t have to wait to long for the celebration to find him.

“The last fumble we had was my fault, so I wanted to make it up to myself and also my teammates,” Hannon said. “I’m lost for words, honestly. I’m the happiest I’ve been in a while.

“We’re all brothers, we say every single week the next man has to be ready to go in the game and make a big play and that’s what we did tonight.”

Stover and his coaches had a long talk with their team after the game, and more than a few Cardinals players stayed on the field a little longer, not wanting to accept it came to an end. The team’s seniors played their final two seasons in circumstances nobody could have predicted, first with the pandemic year in 2020 and this fall, when a tornado and Hurricane Ida left a swath of damage cut through the heart of their community.

The Cardinals closed out their season with a 9-3 record (6-1 SOL).

“To navigate what they had to navigate, only getting a handful of games, a limited time in the weight room but never an excuse,” Stover said. “The kids came to work, wanted to work and there’s some really, really good senior leadership we’re going to lose that will be hard to replace. I think our program’s foundation is enough we’ll be able to fill those holes.”

Plymouth Whitemarsh (10-1, 6-0 SOL) moves on to face top-seeded West Chester Rustin next week. The Colonials will start worrying about that game before the weekend is up, but it’ll be a long time before anyone forgets what took place on Friday at Wissahickon.

“It’s gotta be number one, we’ve had a lot of great battles and it’s always fun playing them,” Chang said. “It’s always a good game and usually, you can take the records out of it when we come into a game against them, but this probably has to be number one in my coaching career in terms of excitement I felt when it was over.”

Plymouth Whitemarsh 14-0-7-15-6 42

Upper Dublin 0-7-7-22-0 36

CLASS 6A Quarterfinals

#5 QUAKERTOWN 42, #4 DOWNINGTOWN EAST 21

It turns out the Panthers were right.

They never believed they should have been seeded behind a Downingtown East team that had a pair of regular season losses, and on Friday night, when it mattered most, they were clearly the better team, outscoring the Cougars 35-7 after falling behind early 14-7.

“Honestly, it wasn’t as close as the score says,” Quakertown coach George Banas said. “They’re a really solid club, and we knew they would try to punch us in the mouth, and we would have to respond and punch them back.

“We said this was going to be like a heavyweight fight to see who would be able to last.”

Friday’s win was the 12^th of the season without a loss for the Panthers, the most ever by a Quakertown football squad.

“I told them after the game – we checked a huge box tonight,” Banas said. “This team had some lofty goals. They wanted to win the league outright, they wanted to go down in the history books as the best team ever to pay in Quakertown.

“There’s no argument now. They’re the only team ever to win two playoff games, and they’re the only team to go 12-0, so there’s no argument, but they’re still hungry. They’re still ready, they’re not done.”

Walter E. Kottmeyer Stadium is home to the Cougars, but on Friday night, the Panther faithful turned Kottmeyer Stadium into their road version of Alumni Field.

“We outnumbered the home team tonight with our student section, our band, our cheerleaders and our fans,” Banas said. “We outnumbered them, and we were so stinking loud tonight. It was unbelievable. It was like our home game. We pre-sold almost 400 tickets.

“It speaks volumes to our community, and the relationship our team and community has together. I actually told the kids in the huddle afterwards – ‘You’re not going to know it now, you’re not going to realize it in December at the banquet. It’s not going to hit you until you’re 30 or 40 what you did for this community as a team and program coming out of the pandemic and what you did for your school coming out of the pandemic. Having some normalcy, having something to celebrate, it’s been really cool.”

The Panthers certainly gave their fans plenty to cheer about. Tyler Woodman turned in another stellar outing, finishing with 31 carries for 163 yards and a touchdown.

“Woodman was just a workhorse tonight,” Banas said. “It’s a shame that he missed the Hatboro-Horsham game (a forfeit win). I think he would be nipping on the heels of the record for most yards in a season, which is held by Robbie Burns.”

Quarterback Will Steich threw for 166 yards and three touchdowns

“Will made some huge plays, extended some plays and then dumped it off to guys in the flat, and they made big yards after the catch,” Banas said.

The Panthers got on the scoreboard first, thanks to a blocked punt by Paul Lancos. After a wild scramble that saw the ball find its way into the end zone, Brett Hileman fell on it for a touchdown and an early 7-0 lead.

“Paul (Lancos) is a senior who doesn’t get a whole lot of reps – he’s a special teams kid,” Banas said. “For him to have that moment in such a big game as a senior, that’s just awesome. Everybody was so happy for him.”

The Cougars answered with back-to-back scores – the second after a fumble recovery that gave East a 14-7 lead. The Panthers knotted the score in the closing seconds of the opening quarter when Steich connected with Woodman for a 31-yard TD.

Then Steich hooked up with John Eatherton for a 37-yard touchdown that put the Panthers on top 21-14.

“Eatherton was the spark we needed, and his touchdown reception was phenomenal,” Banas said. “He had a guy behind him, but he went into another gear and had to totally extend himself without diving to make sure he could catch it on the run and just fingertip grabbed it and hauled it in and continued to run.”

Downingtown East knotted the score 21-21, but the Panthers took a lead they would not lose with 33 seconds remaining in the first half when Steich connected with Zach Fondl for a 19-yard touchdown reception and a 28-21 advantage.

For good measure, the Panthers added a pair of touchdowns in the second half on Woodman runs of 12 and three yards.

The Panthers’ defense kept the Cougars off the scoreboard in the second half and for the game allowed less than 200 total yards of offense and just 52 rushing yards

“And that’s what they like to do,” Banas said. “I was really happy with the way the defense played.

“In the first half, Lex Williams was all over the place, and then it seemed like they made an adjustment to try and pick up Lex, and then (Kaden) Roesener had just a huge second half and Freddie (Retter) and (Vincent) Pellegrini and (Anthony) Schiller and (Blake) Griesemer. (Zach) Greulich made a couple of outstanding tackles out in space. It’s just one guy after the next after the next after the next.”

Quakertown (12-0, 6-0 SOL) will travel to top-seeded Garnet Valley for Friday’s district semifinal contest.

Quakertown 14-14-7-7 42

Downingtown East 14-7-0-0 21

#7 RIDLEY 56, #2 NORTH PENN 55 (OT)

It was the cruelest of endings for a Knights’ squad with lofty aspirations.

One minute the North Penn faithful were celebrating Khalani Eaton’s determined just-try-and-stop-me 10-yard touchdown run on the first play of overtime, and the next, there was stunned silence as the Green Raiders blocked the extra point.

Still, things looked promising for the Knights after their defense stonewalled Ridley standout Tahir ‘Tubby’ Mills on first and second down of the Green Raiders’ ensuing possession. But then on third-and-nine, quarterback John Heller found a wide-open Mills for the tying touchdown. Nick Volpone – whose 36-yard field goal to win it in the closing seconds of regulation sailed wide left – split the uprights for the extra point, bringing the Knights season to heartbreaking end.

“Both times we got them in third-and-longs, we’re manned up, and the guy that was supposed to cover four (Mills) doesn’t cover him,” NP coach Dick Beck said. “How do you not cover their best player? That was frustrating. We had them third-and-(nine), and the guy just runs a simple pattern, and we just don’t cover him. It’s not anything we don’t practice.

“All year, we’ve made mistakes here and mistakes there, and ultimately, they haven’t cost us until today. We had some mental breakdowns on key plays that hurt us.”

For four quarters, the game featured two offensive juggernauts exchanging best shots. The final numbers were staggering as the two teams combined for 111 points and 952 total yards of offense.

“It’s pretty crazy – a lot of points, a lot of points,” Beck said. “I thought we made some decent plays defensively too, but a blocked extra point – that’s brutal. I think we just relaxed on the weak side. The kid came off the edge and did a nice job blocking it.”

Khalani Eaton – 19 carries for 165 yards and four touchdowns – and Ethan Spann, who had five carries for 125 yards and two touchdowns, combined for 290 yards on the ground and six touchdowns. Both were brilliant.

Still, it wasn’t enough to win on this night. Mills saw to that. The senior running back’s ability to shred opposing defenses was hardly a secret. He earned Pennlive.com Pa. Player of the Week honors for his performance in Ridley’s 42-23 opening round district win over Conestoga. In that win, Mills ran for a program single game record 357 yards and scored five touchdowns.

Mills didn’t quite reach those numbers, but he did finish with 42 carries for 326 yards and three touchdowns. He also had three receptions for 32 yards, none bigger than his nine-yard catch in overtime.

“Their running back is really good,” Beck said. “He was doing a great job cutting it back, so they were going one way, and he was finding the hole on the back side. That’s the key to the zone. You look like you’re going one way, and you get a little seam on the back door, and he cuts it back. You can’t reach out and grab him. If you don’t hit him with a shoulder, you can’t tackle him. He’s really strong.

“They do a nice scheme. Their offensive line was really good too, and their quarterback was very poised back there.”

Mills was the workhorse on a 59-yard scoring drive to open the game that he capped with a four-yard touchdown run. The Knights answered with a TD drive of their own that was highlighted by a 35-yard Ryan Zeltt to Xaviar Bryan pass. Eaton punched it in from two yards, knotting the score. 7-7.

The Green Raiders came right back with a 77-yard scoring drive that culminated with a 17-yard touchdown run by Mills, who leaped over a defender on the way to the end zone. Not to be outdone, the Knights responded. This time it was Spann shedding would-be tacklers for a 31-yard touchdown run that knotted the score 14-14.

But not for long.

Khameen Powell’s 81-yard kickoff return for a touchdown as time expired in the opening quarter put Ridley on top 21-14, and the Green Raiders went on top 28-14 with 5:59 remaining in the half when Mills scored on a 42-yard touchdown run to cap a six-play, 96-yard scoring drive.

North Penn responded with a scoring drive that included a pair of huge Zeltt to Levi Carroll connections with Eaton taking it in from a yard out to make it a 28-21 game. A fumble recovery by the Knights at midfield set the stage for the tying score – an impressive 33-yard touchdown connection from Zeltt to Carroll that sent the two teams into halftime deadlocked 28-28.

Not a whole lot changed in the second half. A 64-yard run by Eaton on the first play of the half to Ridley’s 10-yard line was followed by a 10-yard TD run by Michai Cuffie that put the Knights on top 35-28. Ridley knotted the score 35-35, and when the Knights fumbled the pooch kick on Ridley’s ensuing kickoff, the Green Raiders recovered the ball and capitalized, scoring on a Heller to Paul Jackson 37-yard pass play to go on top 42-35. A pick six by the Raiders upped that lead to 49-35, but the Knights roared back.

Eaton’s seven-yard touchdown run made it a one-score game, and after Ronnie Major recovered a fumble, Spann raced 82 yards for the tying score with 6:44 remaining. That 49-49 score stood until the horn ending regulation.

“I thought the kids really played hard,” Beck said. “I’m sure it was a great game to watch – it wasn’t a great game to coach in.

“This team really bonded well and worked hard. It was a fantastic year.”

North Penn closed out its season with an 11-1 record, 7-0 in the SOL with the National Conference title.

Ridley 21-7-21-0-7 56

North Penn 14-14-7-14-6 55

#1 GARNET VALLEY 41, #8 CENTRAL BUCKS WEST 13

The Jaguars looked every bit the part of the district’s top seed in their big win over West.

The game started out on a high note for the Bucks, who led 7-0 after the sophomore connection of quarterback Ganz Cooper and wide receiver Conor McFadden hooked up for a 76-yard touchdown. The Jaguars knotted the score only to watch junior Eli Boehm race 40 yards for a touchdown and a 13-7 West lead.