Protime’s Pigskin Parlance – Milestones, Record Breakers & Game Shakers – Edition 1
Tagged under: News, pfn, Protime Predictions
Phil Myers | August 28, 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: What NFL team has won the most regular season games in the history of the league? Hint: It is not the Steelers or the Eagles.
Program Wins Milestones
Congratulations goes out to the Bedford Bisons and the Phoenixville Phantoms as each won their football program’s 600th game. Radnor won #500 this past Friday. Good job Raptors! Other teams reaching a century mark in school history are the Norwin Knights as they tallied their 400th victory, Bethlehem Freedom as the Patriots appear to have garnered their 300th win, and the Western Wayne Wildcats who notched their 200th. Again, kudos to all.
Coaching Milestones
Bob Wolfrum coached his Wyomissing to a win over Southern Columbia on Saturday. It was his 350th career triumph. Wolfrum is 6th all-time in coaching wins in PA. Congrats Coach Wolfrum! The man he went up against, Jim Roth, will have to wait another week to try and get his 500th coaching victory. North Schuylkill handed their head coach, Wally Hall, his 100th career win and Bob Boden of West Perry came up with his 50th win on Friday.
Team Achievements
Three losing streaks were broken last week. Sheffield possessed a 27-game losing streak before they beat Bucktail 38-6 at their scenic home field called Wolverine Mountain. New Brighton had not won in 21 games, but used a first quarter kickoff return and a safety to hold on and defeat Shenango 9-7. Lastly, Summit Academy stopped a 17-game streak of losing when they edged Frazier 20-16.
The Karns City Gremlin defense played as good as any defensive coordinator could ever want last Friday. They limited Moniteau to a total of minus 33 yards for the game. On top of that they gave up zero first downs and did not allow Moniteau to even cross midfield.
Individual Achievements
The speedy Scoop Smith of Woodland Hills returned a kickoff as far as one can in high school. He galloped 99 yards for the touchdown. Not to be outdone, Imani’s David Davis sprinted 99 yards with a punt. Josiah Carter of Overbrook in Philadelphia also returned a kickoff 99 yards for a TD. That doesn’t happen too often three kick returns for TDs of 99 yards in one week. Gabe Green of Bethlehem Liberty ran two kickoffs back for touchdowns and both were of the 90-yard variety.
David Davis #4 of Imani on his way to the house as he returns a punt 99 yards last Saturday morning.
California’s Lee Qualk rushed for 383 yards and scored 6 touchdowns. Tony Ceriani of Brookville came close to breaking a school single game record when he ran for 302 yards and found the end zone 5 times.
Manny Bolmer, who plays for Catasauqua, only caught 5 passes in his game. So why mention him you ask. Because he chalked up 269 yards and 4 TDs with those 5 catches. That’s an average of 54 yards per pass catch!
Let’s not forget a placekicker. Gavin Lykon-Leffler of Troy went 12 for 12 in the PAT department in the first game of the season.
Record Breakers
Let’s start with a placekicker for this one. Jake Kaylor broke a 50-year record when he kicked a 50-yard field goal last Friday. His feat broke a Southmoreland Highlander record of 48 yards held by Dave Trout since 1974. You may recognize that name as Trout was the placekicker for Pitt in college and the Steelers for a couple years.
Missouri commit Matt Zollers of Spring-Ford became the school’s all-time leading passer as he now has 5,757 career yards. Heavily recruited Roman Catholic QB, Semaj Beals also now has over 5,000 yards passing and became the Cahillites’ top passer of all-time. Jack Howell of Wilkes-Barre Area set 3 school single game records. He broke the previous marks of passes attempted, completed, and yardage when he was 25 of 32 for 325 yards.
Semaj Beals is now the Roman Catholic career passing yardage leader.
The Fightin’ Planets of Mars beat a team from Florida last week. But the story revolves around their QB and WR. Quarterback, Luke Goodworth threw for 391 yards and 5 touchdowns and his main receiver, Gabe Hein, caught passes for 256 of those yards and scored 4 TDs along the way. Those were all single game school records and both young men hold all Mars career records at their position too.
Noah Dolbin of Nativity BVM broke Jeff Yordy’s career receiving touchdown mark. Ellwood City running back, Elijah Palmer-McCane broke the career rushing record. He now has 2,907 yards and will add to it every time he carries the ball the rest of the year.
Games of the Week
I have two worthy to mention and, in my opinion, these were instant classics as they say. There was no overtime when Notre Dame Green Pond upended Garden Spot 71-64. The teams were not familiar with each other having never played before. The game saw each team score 3 times in the first quarter which ended tied at 21. Green Pond was up 35-27 at the half and 57-43 by the end of the third. With a little over four minutes remaining, Garden Spot tied the game at 64, but NDGP drove and scored to make it 71-64. Garden Spot then had a little over a minute to tie or go ahead, but couldn’t do it as a desperation pass was picked off.
Matt Bodnar, the winning QB, was 37 of 49 for 604 yards and threw 7 touchdown passes. AJ Hurst, the losing QB, was 21 for 34, heaving 6 TD tosses and throwing for 462 yards. Those numbers may be school records, but haven’t been confirmed. All in all, the two QBs combined threw for 1,066 yards and 13 touchdowns by completing 71% of the total passes attempted. (AJ Hurst also had an 81-yard pick six.)
The other game I wanted to mention saw Greensburg Central Catholic rally from a 32-10 deficit in the second to come away with a 46-40 victory. QB Samir Crosby (no relation to Sidney of the Penguins) accounted for 6 GCC touchdowns. He passed for 136 yards and 2 scores, but it was his legs that really got the job done. He rushed for 341 yards and crossed the goal line 4 times with the ball. No confirmation if any of his stats were school records.
Answer to the trivia question: The Green Bay Packers have won 799 regular season games going into the 2024-25 season. The Chicago Bears are second with 793. No one else is even close. The only other team with over 700 wins is the New York Giants.
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