Protime’s Pigskin Parlance – Milestones, Record Breakers & Game Shakers – Top Quarterbacks Edition
Tagged under: News, pfn, Protime Predictions
Phil Myers | November 15, 2023
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: We will have a series of state championship questions in the next three weeks. What team has lost the most PA state title games?
Program Wins Milestones
There are two teams going for their program’s 800th and 700th wins this week. If Steelton-Highspire beats Northern Bedford, which will be no easy task, the Steamrollers will garner their 800th win in their storied football history. Likewise, St. Joes Prep will be going for #700 this week when they tackle Abraham Lincoln for the Philly City Championship in 6A. The Hawks are not only the top team in PA, they are ranked 9th in the country by MaxPreps.
Coaching Milestones
Bob Wolfrum has been with the Wyomissing football program for 50 years, 37 as the head coach. His record after the Spartans win last week is 360-88-1. That puts him in 6th place for all-time wins in Pennsylvania and he’s second among all active coaches in PA.
Team Achievements
When Mohawk defeated Imani Christian last Friday, they became the first Mohawk football team to ever reach the WPIAL semi-finals. Congrats goes out to the Warriors. A couple of weeks ago, the Wyalusing Rams rushed 72 times against Mt. Carmel and gained 347 yards in their first round loss to M.C. The number of rushes apparently set a record for the Silver Bowl, which is home of the Mt. Carmel Red Tornadoes. Most of the time teams don’t get to run that many plays including passes in one game. The Troy Trojans play Southern Columbia this week. Troy is 12-0 with 12 mercy rule games. This would be one of my top 5 picks if I could choose a game to attend this week.
Individual Achievements
Parkland’s Trey Tremba is now one of five players in District 11 history to rush for over 3,000 career yards and have over 1,000 receiving yards too. Payton Wehner, Pittsburgh Central Catholic’s quarterback, is now 15th on the District 7 (WPIAL) list of quarterbacks for passing yardage and will be climbing the ladder as long as the Vikings continue to win. Manheim Township’s quarterback, Hayden Johnson, is having one of those stellar years. He’s played 11 games. He’s thrown 44 touchdown passes. He’s been intercepted 0 (zero) times. Braylon Thomas of Union Area became the 5th QB in District 7 history to throw for 2,000 yards and rush for 1,000 in the same season. Jake Kucera of Downingtown West returned a kickoff 99 yards for a TD and Zander Telesz of Hickory ran back an interception 98 yards for a score.
Hayden Johnson, Manheim Township
Record Breakers
Western Beaver’s freshman quarterback, Jaivin Peel, set a WPIAL record for freshmen this year. He threw for 2,898 yards. State College wide receiver, Ty Salazer, became the school’s all-time career leader in receiving yardage with 1,609 and counting. Aaron Johnson of Danville tied the single season PA touchdown record for receivers with 27. That ties Allentown Central Catholic’s Kevin Gulyas who set the record in 2011. Johnson also broke the school record in receiving yardage for one year with 1,364. Danville’s QB Madden Patrick broke a school and D-4 record for TD passes with 45 (the old record was 42). John Elick, Purchase Line and Keith Oates, East Pennsboro broke their respective school’s record for passing yards in a season. Tyler Gee of Loyalsock broke his school’s TD passes for one season. Trey Good (E. Pennsboro) now has the school record for receiving yards in a year and Tucker Teats (Selinsgrove) set the single season rushing yard record for the Seals.
A Long FG Return That Shouldn’t Have Happened
McKeesport freshman Kemon Spell returned a failed FG 102 yards for a TD against Trinity. That was illegal and a mistake by the referees. In high school you can’t advance any kick out of the end zone. We talked about that a couple of weeks ago and then this happens. McKeesport won by two touchdowns, so theoretically, it didn’t affect the outcome, although the final score may have been closer.
Top Quarterbacks
Alex Erby, Steelton-Highspire, leads all of PA in yardage but the number is apparently top secret. Carson Nagle, BEA is second with 3,065 yards. Third is Madden Patrick of Danville, who actually missed a game. He is followed by Stone Saunders, Bishop McDevitt and Matt Zollers, Spring-Ford. Saunders leads in touchdown passes with 50, Patrick has 45, Hayden Johnson has 44, and Erby is in the mix but those stats are unavailable also. Jase Ferguson of Central Clarion has 43 TD tosses.
Carson Nagle, BEA
Games of the Week
Let’s highlight a five of the playoff games of the week that were definite nail-biters to the very end. 1. Central Bucks West beat a very good Garnet Valley team 28-27 in overtime. It was a see-saw game where each team had the lead at one point. Garnet Valley scored first in overtime but had the extra point blocked. Then CB West scored, kicked the PAT, and thus advanced to the D-1 semi-finals. 2. Trailing 9-0 with three and a half minutes to go, Pine-Richland scored 16 points to beat Penn Hills 16-9. The Rams kicked a FG, scored the game-winner with two seconds left, and then returned a fumble for a TD on the last play of the game. 3. Cambridge Springs threw a 22-yard touchdown pass on a 4th down and twelve situation with 26 seconds remaining to beat Eisenhower in dramatic fashion 22-20. 4. East Pennsboro fell behind Lampeter-Strasburg 14-0 at halftime but came back to tie the game on a late field goal thanks to a long pass completion. Both teams scored in the first OT, but missed the point after attempt. Then Lampeter-Strasburg booted a FG and intercepted a pass to win in double overtime. 5. With 3 minutes to go Neshannock, leading 13-6, stopped Beaver Falls at the 5, but had to subsequently punt. Beaver Falls blocked the punt and fell on it for a TD. Then the Tigers made the 2-point conversion (barely) to win 14-13.
Answer to the trivia question: Surprisingly, it’s Southern Columbia. They have lost 8 title tilts. Of course, they’ve also won 13 championships.
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