HERSHEY, Pa. -- Long after Wilmington Area had scored an upset for the ages in the state championship game, its fans lingered along the railing at the bottom of Hersheypark Stadium's east stands, smiling, celebrating, clapping players on the shoulder pads. The score 35-34 was still posted on the scoreboard. Just in case anybody didn't believe it.
AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster
Liberty's Anthony Gonzalez came up with a big interception in the 4A championship.
Quarterback Shane Wagner, the biggest hero on this chilly Saturday afternoon, stood apart from everything for just a moment, taking in the scene. He had said a few minutes earlier that everyone from New Wilmington (a town some 60 miles northwest of Pittsburgh, near the Ohio border) was on hand. It wasn't difficult to believe. Nor was it impossible, seeing as some 2,400 souls call the place home (give or take 1,500, depending on whether Westminster College is in session).
Never could he have envisioned this. No one could have, considering that the Greyhounds, competing in Class AA (Pennsylvania's second-smallest enrollment class), had reached a state final only once before, in 1988 (the first year such playoffs were held), and lost. And considering that they were facing a juggernaut, Philadelphia West Catholic, for the title.
Wagner, wearing a perma-smile, also thought back to when he and his teammates first started playing football as little kids. How they always ran away from the ball carrier when they were playing defense, not wanting to make contact. It was something they had talked about on the five-hour bus ride to Hershey, something they had chuckled about.
"Now look here," he said. "We won states."
In double overtime, no less. Who would dare dream any of that?
Well before the game, Wagner had gone out on the field by himself. He does it all the time, he said, so he can hold a private conversation with his uncle Dave, who died a few years ago in an automobile accident.
"I talk to him and tell him I need some luck," Wagner said.
And after the game, after the most improbable of results, Wagner stole away from the celebration and knelt by himself on the goal line of the stadium's north end zone, where the day's pivotal plays had occurred. Again he talked to Uncle Dave. This time, he thanked him.
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Somebody later asked Wagner why he had been so close to his uncle.
"It wasn't that I was so close," he said. "It was that my dad always asked me to go to [Dave's] work -- go see him, go talk to him -- and I always had other things to do. I always told my dad I didn't want to go. Now that I lost him, I mean, it means a lot to me."
The lesson being, of course, that you have to seize the moment. Because it doesn't come along every day. And it's gone before you know it.
That's what the Greyhounds did. What Wagner did, more than anyone else. He was the one who thwarted West Catholic's two-point conversion try in the second overtime, a period that never would have occurred if he hadn't slalomed 16 yards for the tying touchdown in the first extra period.
It was much the same in the championship games of the state's other three classes, held over two days in Hershey. Bethlehem Liberty, behind the breathtaking performance of junior quarterback Anthony Gonzalez, outlasted Bethel Park in overtime Saturday night 28-21 to win the Class AAAA title that had eluded it in two other appearances in the final.
QBs also made the most of their opportunities for Thomas Jefferson and Steelton-Highspire, which on Friday repeated in Class AAA and Class A, respectively. TJ's Tyler Wehner, dismissed from the team last season, led his team to a 34-7 rout of Archbishop Wood, while Andre Campbell, picking up the slack for hobbled running back Jeremiah Young, paced the Rollers past Clairton 35-16.
Liberty had been blown out by McKeesport and Upper St. Clair after making it to Hershey in 2005 and '06, defeats that have lingered.
"You feel it," said senior two-way tackle Levi Brown, a Temple recruit. "When I came to the stadium, I felt it. Just seeing the lights on and just remembering those two years, you feel it and you remember what happened."
Brown and his offensive linemates did their part to erase those memories, opening so many creases that Gonzalez unfurled a 33-carry, 205-yard, three-touchdown rushing performance. The last of those TDs was a 1-yard plunge on fourth down in OT. Gonzalez then secured the victory with an end-zone interception.
"He's Superman," Liberty coach Tim Moncman said of his 6-foot-3, 190-pound QB. "He's a skinny version of [the University of Florida's Tim] Tebow."
No sooner did the postgame celebration begin than Moncman was joined on the field by his wife, Kim, and their two children -- daughter Taylor, 6, and son A.J., 3.
"Let's go get our trophy," Moncman said to his kids.
Big moment, especially for A.J., who, according to his dad, "lives for football," even though he was born with Leber's Congenital Amaurosis, which has left him blind.
"He has a football in his hand at any given moment," Moncman said. "He gets a play-by-play each game [from a family friend who sits alongside him in the stands], and I have to tell him at home exactly what happened at practice every day."
A.J. also gives the team pregame pep talks. On this night, Brown said, "He was just talking about getting gold, man. He wanted the gold. He wanted the Hershey Kisses."
And, Brown added, "He didn't want to see us cry."
The hulking tackle quickly corrected himself.
"He didn't want to hear us cry."
Instead, A.J. heard the players chanting his name after the game. They wanted him to come be part of the team picture that was being snapped underneath the scoreboard. And he was.
"We really look up to A.J.," Brown said. "He's a tough kid. It's just unbelievable how he carries this football team, with his father and their family. They're part of this family, and we're part of their family."
Meanwhile, Wehner, out of the picture late last season at Thomas Jefferson, threw for three touchdowns and ran for two to lead the Jaguars to their second straight title, their third in five years. Such sustained success has led some observers to refer to them as a dynasty, but coach Bill Cherpak harbors no illusions.
"You have your run," he said. "You look back, Strath Haven did it, West Allegheny did it, Berwick did it. I know eventually it's going to go down. We've just tried to keep it as good as we can, while it lasts. … [The players] want to live up to what's before them, but you've got to have good players. That's No. 1. And we do. We've had some great players come through here, and we have some coming up. I don't care what you are as a coach; you're not a magician. If you don't have good players, you're not going to be anything."
Wehner, whose dad, John, was a Pittsburgh Pirates infielder for parts of 11 seasons, certainly falls into that category. But last year, Wehner said, he began "hanging out with people I shouldn't have." His grades slipped. He was suspended from school early in the season, and later, Cherpak had no choice but to dismiss him.
"I decided as soon as I got kicked off I was coming back," Wehner said.
But in the meantime, all he could do was watch. And he did. He even made the trip to Hershey for the Jags' 28-3 championship-game rout of Garnet Valley.
"I came to support them," he said, "because I still loved everyone on that team."
He loves being directly involved even more. Running back Brian Baldrige, who missed all but one game last season with a knee injury, might have run for 120 yards in the final to send his season total over 2,200 yards. But Wehner was the central figure on this night.
"He's a lot better [off the field]," Baldrige said. "He stays out of trouble. He's on top of his grades. That was the big thing last year. He just keeps himself out of bad situations, and it paid off. He came back and worked his butt off, and we couldn't have won this game without him."
The same could be said of Campbell, who spurred Steel-High in a battle of once-bustling steel towns -- Steelton, which is along the Susquehanna River, near Harrisburg, and Clairton, which is just outside Pittsburgh, along the Monongahela.
He fired a 59-yard touchdown pass to Jordan Smith on the first possession of the second half, snapping an 8-8 tie, then ran for three scores later in the quarter, when the Bears found themselves pinned deep in their own territory by a fierce Rollers defense and an equally fierce wind. (One Clairton punt went all of 7 yards, from the 2 to the 9.)
AP Photo/Ralph Wilson
Eric Smith and Steelton-Highspire beat Clairton in the Class A championship.
Campbell figured to play a more prominent role since Young, the state's all-time leading rusher, had been unable to practice all week after aggravating an injury to his left ankle in the previous round. Young did push his career yardage total over 9,000 (the first runner in state history to do that), but his 81-yard outing was modest by his standards.
So Campbell, who answers to the nickname "Showtime," was happy to step up. And just as happy to talk about it afterward.
"Jeremiah makes it easy for me," he said. "Everybody pays attention to him. … Everybody's chasing Jeremiah, and I say, 'Oh well, it's an easy touchdown.'"
There will be no more of that, though.
"I'm very satisfied, but I'm upset," Campbell said. "This is my last game with my boys."
That includes Young, who now can find out how best to remedy his ankle problems, while also trying to decipher the recruiting process. None of the big boys seems interested in a back listed at 5-10, 190 and timed at 4.4 in the 40, so he plans to visit places like Villanova and Bucknell in January. Maybe Delaware, too.
Nothing wrong with that. A smallish back named Brian Westbrook, for example, did pretty well at Nova.
So while Young would have preferred to go out differently, and while he, too, will miss his buddies, he can't feel too bad.
In fact, he said, "I feel like the greatest, something like Ali."
It was no different for Wagner & Co., although things looked rather bleak at game time. They were, after all, facing a West Catholic team that had scored 741 points coming in, a Philadelphia high school record. Nor had any team in that city's rich football history ever boasted three 1,000-yard rushers, as the Burrs did. One of those, quarterback Curtis Drake, has committed to Penn State, where he will play wide receiver or defensive back.
But the Greyhounds rallied from a 14-0 halftime deficit and found themselves in a 21-21 game late in the fourth quarter, before West mounted a drive that brought them to the very brink of victory. Facing a fourth down inside the 1 with 1:27 left, Burrs coach Brian Fluck eschewed a shorter-than-extra-point-length field goal and went for it, only to see Drake stopped short of the goal line by linebacker Derrick Burns.
Overtime.
West scored, and Wilmington Area was looking at fourth-and-the-season from the 16. Wagner took the snap and rolled left.
"I wasn't even supposed to roll out," he said later.
Teammate Dallas Hartman was standing in the end zone, all by himself, waving his arms. Wagner never saw him, though. He had decided to take off, to begin the ultimate ad lib.
"When I knew he was going to run the ball, I was like, 'He's going to get tackled,'" said Burns, who also plays fullback.
Wagner cut to his right, away from a couple would-be tacklers, and continued all the way across the field, avoiding another defender as he went. Somebody said later that he seemed unhurried, that he appeared content to probe for the right opening. He didn't disagree.
"It felt like a million years," he said, "I'll tell you that."
He crossed over the right hashmark and moved inside the 5. Now a single defender, cornerback Ray Manuel, stood between him and the tying touchdown.
But Wagner disposed of him with a stiffarm and walked into the end zone.
"That," Burns said, "was the craziest, most exciting thing ever."
And all it did was ensure that the game would continue. In the second overtime, Burns scored from the 1, only to see West answer. It was here that Fluck made his second fateful decision, electing to go for two.
"We have athletes out there," he said. "We thought we could get in from the 3-yard line."
But, he added, "We fell that much short."
He held his hands about a foot apart.
They did so because of Wagner. He hit Drake around the ankles just as the West QB, bootlegging to his left, cut toward the end zone. Drake hurtled forward but didn't make it in.
Immediately the east stands exploded. Helmets were thrown. The Wilmington Area players piled on top of each other at the 15. The band began playing Elvis' "Hound Dog."
The Greyhounds had seized the moment. And now it is theirs, forever.
Gordie Jones is a freelance writer in Pennsylvania.
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