Protime’s Pigskin Parlance – 2024 Milestones, Record Breakers & Game Shakers – Edition 2
Tagged under: News, pfn, Protime Predictions
Phil Myers | September 4, 2024
Protime’s weekly column will attempt to get readers up to date on current football facts, stats, and miscellaneous tidbits of information from across the entire state of Pennsylvania. His crack staff of one will peruse some, but not all newspapers and other sources for hopefully what will be up to date scoop on the previous week’s games, records, and hitherto unknown factoids of the sort.
Trivia question of the week: East Brady High School in western PA does not exist anymore, but what NFL Hall of Famer played his high school ball at East Brady?
Program Wins Milestones
A hearty congratulations to Mt. Carmel as they won their 900th football game!! They are the first Pennsylvania team to accomplish that feat. Nationally, Mt. Carmel is the 7th team to ever reach the 900-win pinnacle and the Red Tornadoes are actually now tied for 6th all-time. I’m sure the old timers have some great memories of Mt. Carmel games as does the current generation of players.
Coaching Milestones
There was another significant achievement in the state last week when Jim Roth of Southern Columbia chalked up his 500th career win as the head coach. All of them has been at SCA. Coach Roth is the first PA coach to reach the glorious height of 500 wins. He is also only the 5th coach in the USA to ever hit the 500-win mark. Among his other accomplishments are the 2020 MaxPreps national coach of the year, PA coach of the year 11 times, state champions 14 times, and 31 District 4 titles. Well done coach!!
Jim Smith of Troy led his Trojans to an 8-3 win over Dover, Delaware this past Saturday. By doing so, Coach Smith picked up his 100th win. Troy is currently ranked #1 in the state in Class 2A. Good job, coach!
Team Achievements
The Fox Chapel Foxes snapped a 22-game losing streak with their 38-7 victory over Baldwin a week ago. Congrats! District 11 brings some good news about a couple of teams who have struggled in previous years. The Dieruff Huskies and the William Allen Canaries are both 2-0. For Dieruff it has been 20 years since the Huskies began a season 2-0. For the Canaries of Allen it has been 22 years. On a different note, Karns City now has rushed for over 400 yards two weeks in a row.
Individual Achievements
Three field goals in high school are pretty uncommon, but Aaron Gutkowski of Northampton kicked 3 last week. Gavin Harrold of Penn Cambria had 184 yards in receptions. Brady Collins ran for 435 yards and scored 8 touchdowns last week. Brady Collins of West Chester Henderson rushed for 222 markers and scored 6 of the TDs. Brady Collins of Clearfield ran for the other 213 and 2 touchdowns. Kobe White of Honesdale returned a kickoff for a 96-yard touchdown. Garnet Valley’s Paxton Hunt and Chase Britton combined to bring down 36 opposing ball carriers. Hunt had 21 of those 36 tackles. Speaking of tackles, Chris Harris of OLSH had 17. I’ve never eaten 9 pancakes at one time, but Wyatt Rutherford of Honesdale had 9 in one game!
School Record Breakers
Mike Price, the running back from C.B. East, broke the single game TD record by scoring 6 TDs. Ryan Carroll is now the leading all-time passer at Ridley. Strath Haven’s Luke O’Donoghue broke the one game passing record and tied the single game passing TD record. His 91-yard TD toss to Cad Koehler broke the longest TD pass record too. Luca Santini set the passing record at Laurel.
Interesting Tidbits
Here is an interesting tidbit from the TribLive. The 5A schools in Pittsburgh are 9-3 against 6A schools. The biggest win was Pine-Richland’s second half comeback to beat Central Catholic 22-17 last week. Surprisingly, 6A Norwin has two of those three wins. Two of the 2023 state champs were to play each other, but had their game cancelled due to bad weather. And in case anyone was wondering, Aliquippa was beating Belle Vernon 12-0 in the first quarter.
Games of the Week
Again, this week there were a few that were exciting, went to overtime, etc. I can’t list them all, so these two caught my attention. First, the big one in Harrisburg that found the Cougars scoring with about a minute left to tie the game with McDevitt. The Crusaders then got in position to try a field goal that apparently missed by 6 inches. It was a 52-yard attempt. Harrisburg won in OT by getting a 2-point conversion forcing McDevitt to go for 2 which they could not convert. Harrisburg 35 McDevitt 33.
The other game found Mt. Pleasant triumphing over Greensburg Central Catholic 36-35 in double overtime. With a minute remaining in regulation and the scored tied at 21, GCC missed a 36-yard FG. Each team scored and kicked the extra point in the first OT, but after Greensburg went up 35-28 in the second overtime, Mt. Pleasant went for two and made it after they scored their touchdown.
Answer to trivia question: Jim Kelly. He went on to the University of Miami, Fla. where he played his college ball, then on to the Houston Gamblers in the now defunct USFL, and finally the Buffalo Bills where he remains the only NFL quarterback to ever lead a team to 4 straight Super Bowls. Unfortunately, the Bills lost each time.
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