Cheltenham lost a 19-15 heartbreaker to Archbishop Wood in Friday’s PIAA 5A state title game at HersheyPark Stadium. Photos provided courtesy of Geanine Jamison. Check back for a gallery of photos.
ARCHBISHOP WOOD 19, CHELTENHAM 15
The state title game was following a familiar script.
The Panthers were surely going to win another wild one, rallying from a 12-0 deficit to take their first lead of the game with four minutes remaining in regulation when Sidiqq Williams scooped up a low Adonis Hunter pass and took it into the end zone for a touchdown. Zach Gaffin went in untouched for the two-point conversion, and the Panthers – who led 15-12 - appeared to be in the driver’s seat.
The go-ahead score was set up with a dazzling you-had-to-see-it-to-believe-it play at the Panthers’ 18 when Jamir Barnes made a leaping 
interception, somehow pulling down a Max Keller pass over the Wood offensive player. It was the kind of unlikely magic the Panthers had been pulling out of their hats with regularity in recent weeks.
“I’ll tell you one thing – any game Cheltenham plays in, we certainly put on a show,” Cheltenham coach Ryan Nase said. “These last three games – if we were an NFL team, we’d sell out the stadium because it’s always interesting.”
The Cheltenham faithful were hoping the story would end with their team’s TD, but the Vikings had other ideas, using all but four seconds of the four minutes remaining to score a touchdown when Keller – who had completed just 3-of-11 passes – found Cardel Pigford with a three-yard TD pass on what would have been Wood’s final attempt for the win in regulation.
While the ending was cruel, the season was nothing short of storybook, capturing the imagination of a school, a community and well beyond.
“It’s going to take some time,” Nase said. “I told them in the locker room at the end of the game – ‘This sucks and it hurts, and there’s nothing I can say and there are no words that should make you feel better. If you feel okay right now and you’re satisfied, then I question what’s inside of your ticker. But at the end of the day, my job isn’t to win state championships. My job is to teach you how to be men who learn things you could never learn in a classroom. You could never learn in a chemistry or math or any classroom how to give absolutely everything you have for 10 or 12 months and then come up four seconds short. You can’t learn how to deal with that in a classroom. We’re going to deal with it, and we’re going to deal with it together. When we lost to Upper Dublin 27-0 (in the second round of districts) last year and some things went really bad, I and some of my assistants thought we were done. They thought Cheltenham was done. Now we just made back-to-back trips to Hershey. We’re like cats, man. Every time we’re dead, we still have got a bunch of lives left.’ That was my message.”
It was a message that might not have resonated on Friday night just minutes after the heartbreaking end, but it undoubtedly will before too long.
“For some of the kids who took it the hardest, this isn’t going to be their last football game,” Nase said. “Jamir Barnes is going to play in playoff games at Monmouth (University).
“TJ Harris, Adonis Hunter, Sidiqq Williams, Jon-Marc Foreman – they’re all going to continue playing football at whatever college they choose .jpg)
to, and in a couple of weeks when there are five or six college coaches coming in every day to meet our kids, that’s what’s really important - not a state championship as much as I would really, really have loved one.”
Friday’s game didn’t start on an especially promising note for the Panthers. They trailed 6-0 at halftime, but twice they had been in the red zone.
Twice they came up empty – the first time on a botched field goal attempt, thanks to a bad snap, and the second when the Vikings came up with a stop on fourth down with the ball on their 13.
It looked as though the game was slipping away from the Panthers when they fumbled the opening kickoff of the second half, and on the very next play, Kaelin Costello raced into the end zone from 29 yards out. The pass for the two-point conversion failed, but the Vikings led 12-0.
The game took a decidedly bad turn for the Panthers when they fumbled the ensuing kickoff, and the Vikings took over on Cheltenham’s 38. The Panthers got a reprieve when a 28-yard field goal attempt sailed wide of the goal post.
“We don’t do things the typical way,” Nase said. “We’re resilient. Things like that happen to us all the time.
“The coach in me is frustrated because we know Nate Edwards and TJ Harris are really good, and every game - we play people come up with a plan to not kick to them. We do special teams Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. It’s my thing because I was a special teams coordinator before I was a head coach. We always tell the second line guys – ‘If it’s a popup, just fair catch it, and we’ll take the ball at the 35 or 40 every time.’ We practice that – we want to fair catch it, but we didn’t do it.
“We had some success offensively in the second half, and those are two more possessions that I wish we would have had, but at the end of the day, we had ball inside their 15 twice in the first quarter and came away with no points.”
Down but not out, the Panthers – on their drive after Wood’s missed field goal – hit paydirt. Barnes ignited the offense with a 40-yard run, and the drive was capped when TJ Harris delivered a brilliant play, somehow managing to get a toe inbounds in the back of the end zone on a 20-yard Hunter pass for a touchdown that made it a 12-7 game.
That score stood until the Barnes interception set up the go-ahead scoring drive for the Panthers, but the Vikings had four minutes to answer. That proved to be just enough time. A pivotal play came on fourth-and-one at the Panthers’ 19 when Costello raced 16 yards to the three-yard line.
With eight seconds remaining, the Vikings had time for one more play before attempting the tying field goal. It turned out to be the game-winner.
“They had one play, and we didn’t make it,” Nase said. “They had a fourth down a couple of plays before that where even if you allow them to get the first down – that’s fine, but you can’t let them get (16 yards) on it.
“Our defense did a lot of really good things today, but we’ve just really, really struggled to stop the run, and that’s something I’m going to have to evaluate over the offseason how to stop that because it’s the easiest thing for any team we play to do.”
Costello finished the game with 280 yards on 38 carries.
“He’s a really good player, but at the end of the day, he had 280 yards but they only scored 19 points,” Nase said. “If going into this, you would have said Archbishop Wood would score 19 points, I would have told you we were coming home with the trophy.
“Obviously, the defense is going to take some heat because they didn’t make the stop at the end of the game, but they shouldn’t have had to.”
Hunter threw for 79 yards and two touchdowns and ran for 42 more. Barnes had 20 carries for 89 yards. Harris had three receptions – two .jpg)
highlight reel plays – for 52 yards.
When the dust settles on Friday’s loss, Panther fans will remember the team’s resiliency, the team’s guts and heart, the team’s ability to deliver the big play when it mattered most, and a storybook season that lit up the chilly Friday nights in October and November.
EXTRA POINTS - The cupboard is hardly bare for the Panthers. Gaffin has been groomed to line up behind center next year. “I love Adonis Hunter – nobody is going to put up Adonis Hunter type numbers for a really long time, but our starting quarterback next year is the kid who was the only captain of our team as a junior,” Nase said of Gaffin. “The lights aren’t going to be too bright for Zach Gaffin. He’s going to be fine.”…Nase acknowledged the support of SOL coaches on his team’s journey. “I saw Bret Stover after the game, and he gave me a thumbs up,” the Panthers’ coach said. “Ed Gallagher was there, Mark Schmidt was there – someone said there were five or six Suburban One coaches there. Kevin Conlin has texted me every day this week, and Dan Chang sent me a really nice message. That’s been a really cool part of this whole thing.”…Cheltenham (6-0 SOL) closed out its historic season with a 14-2 record.
Cheltenham 0-0-7-8 15
Archbishop Wood 0-6-6-7 19
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