Fort Cherry rallies behind Sieg’s six rushing touchdowns for Semifinal Round win

Tagged under: District 7, Gameday Hub, News, Playoffs

Ethan Spozarski | November 16, 2024

The Fort Cherry Rangers punched their ticket back to Acrisure stadium with the 49-14 win over the Jeannette Jayhawks. 

Fort Cherry’s QB and new Penn State commit, Matt Sieg had six of the seven Ranger touchdowns. Seig also eclipsed 4,000 career passing yards, joining only Terrell Pryor as the only WPIAL players who have ever passed and rushed for 4,000 yards each. 

“It is pretty special,” Sieg said. “It doesn’t happen too often so I’m going to have to sit back and appreciate that. That is obviously some pretty good company and it was cool to do it against them too; that’s a really good team over there.” 

Fort Cherry started the game off on offense and Sieg finished off that drive with a rushing touchdown. 

Jeannette on their first drive started to get rolling, but after a bad snap fumble, Fort Cherry fell on top of it and took the ball right back. Luckily the Jayhawks got the ball back quickly after getting a fourth down stop near midfield. 

Jeannette drove back down the field and got to the one-yard line but Fort Cherry stood tall getting two stops on third and fourth down and getting the ball back with five seconds off of the second quarter. 

After trading punts, Fort Cherry found the endzone again via Sieg for his second rushing touchdown leading 14-0 with a little under seven minutes left in the second quarter. 

Jeannette did get the first of their two touchdowns of the night when Jayce Powell caught a 59-yard touchdown pass. The Jayhahwks cut the lead down to seven with a little two minutes left in the first half. 

Fort Cherry scored two touchdowns in this time period, both being from Sieg, and the Rangers went into halftime leading 28-7. 

After the half Jeannette started the ball. Jeannette was forced to punt, however off of a muffed catch, the Jayhawks fell on the ball to get possession back. Jeannette ended up scoring on this drive cutting the lead back to 14 points with just under eight minutes left in the third quarter.

Unfortunately for Jeannette that was the last time they found the endzone. 

The Rangers did score three more touchdowns, two more from Sieg and one from Ryan Hue segmented the dominant second half from the Rangers. 

Fort Cherry is heading to Acrisure Stadium for the second time in the last two years and this time to defend their 1A WPIAL Championship. 

“I mean it is just amazing,” Sieg said. “We all got a lot of love for eachother, I mean just growing up together; this is just great to be able to do this again and it never gets old.” 

Fort Cherry will face off against the Clairton Bears; a team who hasn’t allowed more than seven points all year including the playoffs. 

“We are going to enjoy tonight, film tomorrow, and then we are going to focus up,” Sieg said. “This is just another week; they’re a good team but so are we, so we are just gonna go down and execute and do what we do.”

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