Check out the results from SOL teams that were in action on Thursday. To view photos of the Pennridge/Quakertown and Hatboro-Horsham/Upper Moreland games, please visit the Photo Gallery later this weekend. (Several statistics in the wrap were provided courtesy of Calkins Media.)
By Scott Huff
Perkasie - Pennridge senior running back Michael Class does not have the bravado of Muhammad Ali, but the diminutive speedster can lay claim to being The Greatest running back in the storied Ram football history. Class led the Rams (8-4, 4-3) to a 27-7 home victory over rival Quakertown (7-5, 3-4) before a packed house at Poppy Yoder Field on a cold and blustery Thanksgiving morning.
Class – who owns career Pennridge rushing records in both total yards and touchdowns – added to that magnificent legacy in his final scholastic high school game with a brilliant 212-yard performance that included three breathtaking touchdown runs. Class also caught four passes for 30 yards and intercepted a pass that ended a Panther scoring threat.
“Michael is such a determined back that has great moves in the open field,” said Pennridge head coach Jeff Hollenbach. “He seems to play the game at a different level.”
Class – who incredibly has not been offered a firm commitment from any college teams at this point – was unable to play against Quakertown last season due to injury.
“Last year I was very upset about not being able to play in the Quakertown game,” said Class who missed the game with a concussion. “I really wanted the chance to play in this game, and now I will have a memory I can look back on when I am in my 40’s and 50’s.
“I thought we did a great job of focusing on Quakertown and getting up for the game,” added Class. “We wanted to be able to make some big plays, and we were able to do that.”
Class was indeed the big-play maker with his sensational touchdown runs.
The first big play of the game came in the second period with the contest scoreless. Class took a simple handoff on third-and-five and turned on the jets for a 63-yard touchdown scamper along the Panther sideline. The Rams went for a 2-point conversion and senior quarterback Matt Pasquale connected with senior Micah Stutzman for the conversion. The 8-0 Pennridge lead would become the halftime score.
Class and the Rams would add to the lead with his second touchdown in the third period. Pasquale connected with Stutzman for a 30-yard pass completion, and on the very next snap Class would break tackles and dart 25 yards for a touchdown. The 2-point conversion failed, and the Rams settled for a 14-0 lead.
Class and the Rams would add to the lead later in the third period with his third touchdown burst. This time Class would again break tackles and raced 32 yards to pay dirt. The PAT failed, and Pennridge would settle for a 20-0 lead.
Quakertown would score its only points of the game in the fourth period. Senior running back Matt Stoneback capped the impressive 15-play, 75-yard scoring drive with a 3-yard touchdown run. Nick Soriano booted the PAT, and the Panthers would close to 20-7.
Quakertown would get no closer.
“It was great to score the touchdown, but we really wanted to win the game,” said Stoneback. “It was great to end the year with a winning record after winning just one game last year, but our seniors wanted to be able to say that we beat Pennridge. I am sad that the season is over.”
Pennridge scored in the waning moments of the game when Pasquale fired a 30-yard touchdown pass with 47 seconds left in the game. Peter Psomiadis added the PAT and the 27-7 score would become final.
“It was a great way to end the season for this team, and a great way for our seniors to go out,” said Hollenbach. “Quakertown had a very good team this year, and we knew we were going to have to play well to beat them.”
Michael Class and the Rams played well – extremely well.
Quakertown Panthers 0 0 0 7 - 7
Pennridge Rams 0 8 12 7 - 27
P: Michael Class 63 run (Micah Stutzman pass from Matt Pasquale)
P: Class 25 run (run failed)
P: Class 32 run (kick failed)
Q: Matt Stoneback 3 run (Nick Soriano kick)
P: Stutzman 30 pass from Pasquale (Peter Psomiadis kick)
Quakertown Pennridge
17 First Downs 12
193 Rushing Yards 250
41 Passing Yards 90
234 Total Yards 340
5-31 Punts / Average 3-44
3-35 Penalties / Yards 5-50
Quakertown:
Rushing: Rob Burns 19 carries, 72 yards; Alec Vera 14 carries 50 yards; Matt Stoneback 9 carries, 31 yards & TD; Keegan Williamson 2-25; Micah Ruch 3-4; Jon Polynski 2-4; Ryan Heegard 1-7. Totals 50-193- & TD.
Passing: Alec Vera 7 completions, 15 attempts, 1 interception, 41 yards.
Receiving: Jon Polynski 3 catches, 10 yards; Brian Cass 1-10; Pat SanAngelo 1-7; Tyler Kishbaugh 1-9; and Hunter Nice 1-5. Totals 7-41.
Pennridge:
Rushing: Michael Class 22 carries, 212 yards, 3 touchdowns; Matt Pasquale 6-40; Jon Unganst 1-0; Team 1 (minus 6). Totals 30-250 yards 3 touchdowns.
Passing: Matt Pasquale 6 completions, 10 attempts, 90 yards, TD.
Receiving: Micah Stutzman 2 receptions, 60 yards, touchdown; Class 4-30. Totals 6-90.
Inteceptions: Class.
UPPER MORELAND 21, HATBORO-HORSHAM 14
Fourteen seconds.
That’s all it took for Nick DeLucas to give his team momentum it would not lose. On the first play of the fourth quarter with the score deadlocked 14-14, the Golden Bears’ senior fullback took the handoff on second-and-long from his own team’s 10-yard line. He burst through the line and saw nothing but daylight ahead, racing 90 yards for an electrifying TD that turned out to be the game winner on a bitterly cold and windy Thanksgiving morning.
“I stepped left and then I went right,” DeLucas said. “I was waiting for my blocking on the line, and the hole just opened up.
“I just have to thank my line for blocking for me. The hole just opened up, and I saw no one was there, and I just ran my heart out. I was so tired I just fell in the end zone. It was fun.
Earlier in the half, junior running back Tyler Whitmore had an equally dramatic moment when he raced 80 yards, somehow escaping the grasp of would-be tacklers and sprinting down the sidelines for a TD that – after the extra point – knotted the score 14-14.
It was a second half to remember for the Golden Bears, whose defense shut out the Hatters in the second half. Torin Grumm, clutching his team Defensive MVP trophy, acknowledged it had been quite a battle.
“It’s a classic Hatboro game – they’re always like that,” the Golden Bears’ senior linebacker said. “It felt good because the last two years it’s been a blowout, so I knew it was going to be a close game.
“Tensions were high and all that good stuff. The team rallied back – I’m real proud of my guys. It was a great time.”
Grumm nodded in the direction of DeLucas.
“His run,” he said. “That and Tyler Whitmore’s (80-yard TD) run. That was just crazy. We were just going nuts. At halftime, coach said – it’s all about finishing, and it feels good as a senior winning the game. My brother played, and I’ve been around this game for eight years. Winning this year is so much better. We didn’t make playoffs, unfortunately, but this was our playoff game. It was a (heck) of a game.”
For the better part of the game, it looked as though the day might belong to the Hatters. They scored on their first possession of the game when Jack Panara rumbled in from 30 yards out. That 7-0 lead disappeared when Charlie Hooker found teammate Tom Robinson with a 31-yard touchdown strike that knotted the score 7-7 at the end of one quarter, but a seven-yard TD run on a quarterback keeper by Jack Morris with 37 seconds remaining in the half sent the Hatters into halftime with a 14-7 lead.
That lead disappeared with Whitmore’s magnificent 80-yard TD run down the far sidelines at the 7:24 mark of the third quarter, knotting the score 14-14. The junior running back finished with 121 yards on 19 carries.
“We knew what we wanted to do,” Upper Moreland coach Adam Beach said. “At halftime we talked about it, we wanted to get Tyler on the outside and let him use his speed.
“It was a great run. They had multiple chances to knock him out, and he just kept on going. He ran tough. It was a special run by a special kid.”
The Hatters appeared to be in the driver’s seat as Morris engineered a drive that began on his team’s 24-yard line all the way to the Upper Moreland 14, but when Ryan Norton recovered a fumbled exchange that gave the Golden Bears possession, the stage was set for DeLucas’ big run to open the fourth quarter.
“We were stressing turnovers all week,” Beach said. “Our kids did a good job of finding the football. We preach that at practice. When you get to the ball, good things happen.
“I think our kids executed up front. We blocked downfield, and our running backs hit the holes, and they ran like they’re supposed to. It’s the culmination of everything we preach in practice, and they executed on the field. That’s one of the reasons why we got the win.”
The rest of the fourth quarter belonged to the Golden Bears’ defense, which allowed the Hatters to twice reach midfield but they would get no further.
“It was just back and forth,” Grumm said. “Their quarterback – he’s a little shifty dude, and he made some plays. That last pass Charlie (Hooker) knocked down, and that sealed it for us. That was great.”
“It was a close battle the whole game,” DeLucas said. “Tyler Whitmore had that nice big run, and that boosted us up a little bit, pumped us up.
“We didn’t make playoffs this year, and that kind of stunk, but this was pretty much our playoff game. It’s a great rivalry. It was fun playing these guys. I had a good time.”
For the Hatters, who closed out the year with a 4-8 mark, it was a disappointing finish to a game that started with such promise.
“A couple of turnovers hurt us,” first-year coach Michael Kapusta said. “They busted a long one with the fullback.
“When you play one of these rivalry games, you throw out the records. You can forget everything. Obviously, this (season) didn’t turn out the way you would dream about it, but we did a lot of things. We had a lot of kids experience a lot of success. Just so many ups and downs. The ups were great, and we have to remember what got us to those positions to experience those positive things that happened.”
For the Hatters, senior Keith Cameron received the team Defensive MVP award while junior Jack O’Malley was offensive MVP. Grumm was Upper Moreland’s Defensive MVP, and Hooker walked away with Offensive MVP honors.
The Golden Bears closed out the year with a 5-7 mark, and this win, according to Beach, was for the seniors.
“It’s always a senior game,” the Golden Bears’ coach said. “Thanksgiving is always a senior game. You always want to put your seniors in a position to make the plays, and we made them today.
“It’s the culmination of a long season where the kids really got better every week. We didn’t always get the ‘W’ but we got better every week. To see them come out and play a complete football game that they finished. They played a full 48 minutes, which is very satisfying when you get the win.”
Upper Moreland 7 0 7 7-21
Hatboro-Horsham 7 7 0 0-14
CHELTENHAM 35, ABINGTON 34 (OT)
By Mike Prince
After a missed extra point kept Cheltenham from winning in regulation, coach Joe Gro was visibly upset with himself for not going for two points. After all, with a pair of extra points already sailing wide and with huge wind gusts all morning, it might’ve been a bigger risk to go for the usual sure thing than to run another offensive play.
So when the Panthers scored in overtime and had to choose to go for the win or the tie, it was a pretty easy decision for the long-time Cheltenham coach – who had to watch his team lose the past seven consecutive Thanksgiving Day games.
With the game on the line, Cheltenham senior quarterback, on the final play of his high school career, reached for the goal line and successfully converted on a two-point conversion in overtime, lifting the Panthers to a 35-34 win over Abington at Cheltenham High School in the 93rdannual Turkey Day meeting between the neighborhood rivals.
“That was the biggest game of my life,” Heimann said. “We lost to Abington so many years in a row and this was such a great game. Everybody is so happy. You can feel the excitement in the air.”
The two-point conversion marked a remarkable comeback which saw the Panthers come back from being down two touchdowns in the second half, with the game-tying score coming with only 30 seconds remaining after Cheltenham drove more than half the field in just over 30 seconds.
Leading the comeback, of course, was Heimann.
“That was just how Mark played all year,” Gro said. “He had a great year and I know he was disappointed with the series before we tied it when we fumbled, so it was great to see him come out and rectify that with a neat finish. That was awesome.”
In overtime, Abington scored first, as senior Craig Reynolds ran in a five-yard touchdown – his fourth of the game – to put the Ghosts up 34-27. On Cheltenham’s ensuing possession, Heimann hit Brandon Mack for a seven-yard touchdown to keep the Panthers alive.
On the two-point conversion, Heimann took the snap out of the shotgun, looked around for an open receiver and then took over running. He reached for the goal line and while there was confusion to whether or not his knee hit the ground before he broke the plane of the end zone, the referees ruled the play a touchdown and the win belonged to Cheltenham.
“The referee just put his arms up when I crossed the goal line and it put me in tears,” an emotional Heimann said. “It was just awesome.”
Trailing 27-14 after the first half, Heimann and the Panthers came out in the second half and played excellent on defense, keeping the Ghosts off the scoreboard. Offensively, they scored once in the third quarter, when Gro called one of his very, very rare trick plays that saw Mack hit Chris Myarick for a 21-yard touchdown.
In the fourth, after getting the ball back in the final minute, Heimann completed a 37-yard pass to Myarick to set up a first-and-goal from the four-yard line, where the quarterback would run it in for a touchdown on the following play.
The rest was history, and Cheltenham was able to complete the comeback and defeat Abington for the first time since 2005.
"It has been while for us," Gro said. "I was really proud of the kids. They fought really hard. We had a similar situation some years ago with the roles being reversed and we were coming off of a few days rest after a tough loss and your focus is somewhere else. They're certainly a better football team on any given day and I know this is a bit different for them, but our kids fought hard and we got a couple opportunities that we took advantage of.”
In the defeat, the Ghosts did have one big highlight as Reynolds, the all-time leading rusher in Abington history, broke the 2,000-yard milestone. The star senior ran 40 times for 203 yards and four scores, giving the running back a career total of 2,108 yards and 31 touchdowns.
Cheltenham was able to stay in the game in the first half thanks in part to the play of junior Greg Morris, who ran in a pair of touchdowns. Morris finished with 112 yards on 18 carries. Heimann completed 10 of 21 passes for 115 yards, one touchdown and one interception, while also rushing 15 times for 71 yards, a touchdown and the all-important two-point conversion.
Myarick caught a game-high seven passes for 114 yards and a touchdown for Cheltenham, which now trails the all-time series with Abington 54-33-6 in the annual holiday game.
“Our kids played really hard today and I'm very proud of them,” Gro said.
The win, Cheltenham's fourth in a row, ended the Panthers' season with an overall record of 6-5.
Abington 6 21 0 0 7-34
Chetenham 6 8 7 6 8-35
HARRY S TRUMAN 34, CONWELL EGAN 7
The Tigers closed out the year with a 6-6 record – their highest win total since 1995, and they also captured their third straight Turkey Bowl, thanks to Wednesday’s no-doubt-about-it win. Truman scored on its first possession of the game when Jordan Livingston took it in from nine yards out. A fumble recovery by Brandon Hill on Conwell Egan’s ensuing position set up another score – this one a Trysten Hunt TD from five yards out that put the Tigers on top 14-0. The Eagles made it a 14-7 game at halftime, but the Tigers went on top 21-7 on Hunt’s eight-yard touchdown run on the opening drive of the second half. Hunt finished the day with 125 yards and four touchdowns on 21 carries. The running back also led the Tigers defensively, delivering a team-high 12 tackles from his middle linebacker position.
Conwell Egan 0 7 0 0-7
Harry S Truman 14 0 14 6-34
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