Protime’s Pigskin Parlance – 2024 Milestones, Record Breakers & Game Shakers – Edition 6
Tagged under: News, pfn, Protime Predictions
Phil Myers | October 2, 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.
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Trivia question of the week: Everyone knows Tom Brady has won the most games in NFL history, but what other four QBs round out the top five in all-time wins?
Couple Notes from Prior Weeks
Madden Patrick of Danville went over 6,000 career yards and is now the school’s all-time touchdown pass leader. Roman Catholic junior Semaj Beals passed the 6,000-career yard mark also and will surpass Philadelphia City League record holder Kyle McCord of St. Josephs Prep at some point. McCord has the record with 6,887 yards.
Madden Patrick of Danville.
Program Wins Milestones
Bethlehem Liberty won the program’s 600th game when they beat East Stroudsburg North 39-0. The Hurricanes are currently HM in Class 6A. Congrats to Liberty! By the way, the Liberty Marching Band is the best high school band I’ve ever seen.
Upper St. Clair’s Panthers won their 500th game by beating Peters Township, the #2 state ranked team, at the time. Coupled with Roman Catholic’s upset loss, the 500th career win for USC propelled them to the top of the PFN Class 5A rankings. Congrats goes out to the Panther Nation and their accomplishment.
Uniontown also won their 500th contest when they defeated Brownsville 48-0 this past week. The Red Raiders have fallen on some hard times in recent years but this is a huge achievement. Congrats!
York Catholic garnered their 400th career win by beating rival York County Vo-Tech 20-6. The Fighting Irish football faithful should be feeling pretty good. Way to go!
Last, but not least, Twin Valley reached the century mark by beating North Lebanon 42-0. The #5 ranked 4A team, according to PFN, has been on a roll the past couple years. Congrats to the Raiders and here’s to the next 100 victories.
Coaching Milestones
Dan Chang of Plymouth-Whitemarsh collected his 100th career win when his Colonials knocked off Hatboro-Horsham 38-0.
Team Achievements
Deer Lakes continues to impress. The Lancers are now 6-0 for the first time in program history. Ellwood City beat New Brighton 33-0 and is now 5-0 for the year. That is the first time they’ve been 5-0 since 1986. Clairton chalked up their 5th straight shutout beating Jeannette 43-0. The Bears have only given up 7 points all year and those were points the offense gave up, not the unscored upon defense.
Individual Achievements
Stone Saunders of Bishop McDevitt broke Steelton-Highspire grad Alex Erby’s career touchdown pass mark of 176. Saunders tossed a pair of touchdown passes and now has 178 career TD passes. He said he was glad to get it behind him. Stone is the epitome of hard work. The Kentucky bound commit said when he was younger, no one wanted him as a quarterback even in midgets.
Twin Valley’s quarterback, Evan Myers, surpassed the 5,000 career passing yards mark as did Bishop Canevin quarterback Kole Olszewski. Matt Bodnar, Notre Dame Green Pond, is one of the top passers in the state this year. This past week he completed 21 of 27 passes for 427 yards and a quadruple of touchdowns. With North Catholic’s first team quarterback out, Tom Arth stepped in for his first start of the year. All he did was throw for 381 yards and 3 touchdowns against state ranked Imani Christian.
Niko Carestia, the Schuylkill Haven RB, has scored 15 touchdowns the past three weeks and galloped for 870 yards during that time, including 333 last week against Williams Valley. On the receiving side of things, Luke Kreger caught 11 passes for 257 yards. Luke plays for North Penn-Mansfield. It’s not known if the yardage total is a school record.
Defensively, Luke Oriel of Cedar Crest had three picks last Friday. Schuylkill Valley’s Logan Cammauf and Kowen Gerner had 23 and 21 tackles respectively in their game with Nativity BVM. Gavin Zillman, Harbor Creek’s punt returner extraordinaire, returned two for touchdowns.
School Record Breakers
As mentioned last week, Protime loves to see field goals. Rocco Marcantonio of Hopewell tied the D7 (WPIAL) mark of 55 yards. Billy Lech, Pittsburgh Central Catholic and Brady Miller, New Oxford set school records both kicked 54 yarders. Speaking of kicking, Corey Warren, a junior at Susquenita, broke the school career mark for kicking points. When Brady Frazer (Homer-Center) kicked a 46-yard FG last Friday, it is believed to be the longest field goal kicked in school history.
Isaac Zietz (General McLane) set his school’s passing yardage record and his favorite target, twin brother Jacob, set the GM Lancer single game receiving record by nabbing passes for 212 yards. Carson Heinle of Kiski Area became the school’s all-time passing and completions leader.
Jacob Zietz #2 and Isaac Zietz #3 – General McLane.
Warrior Run halfback, Eli Butler, accumulated 469 all-purpose yards. His rushing yardage of over 300 was a Warrior Run Defender school record. Haverford High’s Liam Taylor broke the school single game rushing record by racing for 337 yards.
Trey Porter, Tri-Valley, apparently broke the Bulldog record punt return record by running back a punt 85 yards. Julius Best of Chartiers Valley probably broke the Colt kickoff return record with his 99-yarder. California’s Adin Keyes set the school record with his 95-yard pick six.
Dom Fetterolf of Southern Columbia and Austin Kurtz of Octorara became their school’s all-time leading tacklers last Friday. Fetterolf surpassed 500 career tackles.
Interesting Tidbits
Fourteen field goals of 40 yards or more sailed through the uprights this past week, which may have set a record for most at that distance in one week. Four of them were of the more than 50-yard variety and three were mentioned above. Richland’s Noah Ritko is the fourth. His FG made it from 50 yards away.
The Allegheny Six Conference in District 7 (WPIAL) has the following 5A teams and their records: Upper St. Clair 6-0 (ranked #1 in state), Peters Township 5-1 (ranked #3), Bethel Park 6-0 (ranked #5), South Fayette 6-0 (unranked), Moon 3-3, and Baldwin 0-6. Is this the toughest conference in the state?
Can anyone top this stat? Mt. Carmel statistician, Jose Gonzalo, has attended 700 straight Red Tornado games dating back to 1966. That is simply amazing.
Games of the Week
There were four classics, the last one having one of the most unusual endings you’ll ever hear about. Dallastown led Central York at various points in their contest by scores of 6-0, 13-7, 20-13, and finally 27-20 in overtime. But each time Central York battled back to take the lead or tie the game. In overtime, Central York gambled and went for two and the win. They converted and won 28-27 before a huge crowd.
Mount Pleasant lost a heartbreaker two weeks ago in overtime, but this week they won a thriller in regulation by scoring a touchdown with only 14 seconds left to beat Yough 22-19.
Delaware Valley was involved in a see-saw battle with Abington Heights as the score was tied at 14 after the first period. Heights led 21-14 at the half and the game was again tied after three quarters at 21. Then Abington scored to go ahead 28-21 only to see Del Val tie the game with 7 minutes to go and win it in the waning seconds 35-28.
Hempfield and Canon-McMillan were involved in a nip and tuck battle royale. Hempfield used a 55-yard pick six to go up 7-0, then trailed 10-7, before scoring to retake the lead 14-10. The Big Macs led 20-14 at the intermission. The Spartans tied the game when the defense scored again, this time on a 50-yard run of a fumble recovery. Then Canon-McMillan scored and led 27-20. Late in the fourth, Hempfield faced a 4th and 17. They completed a 48-yard pass that was juggled and caught between two C-M defenders. But with less than a minute to go a Canon Mac player intercepted a pass in the end zone, but did not take a knee and dropped the ball to celebrate. Hempfield jumped on the ball for the game-tying touchdown and the Spartans won it in overtime 33-27. Have you ever heard of such a thing?
Answer to trivia question: Tom Brady has 236 career wins. Second is Peyton Manning with 200. Brett Favre is third with 199. Then comes Drew Brees who collected 181. Ben Roethlisberger rounds out the top five with 178 victories.
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