Roth and Southern Columbia captured its record 15th state championship on Friday, taking the PIAA Class 2A state title with a 43-22 victory over District 10 champion Farrell at Cumberland Valley High School’s Chapman Field.
Southern Columbia (15-1) held Farrell’s Nebraska-bound tailback Juelz Johnson, Pennsylvania’s leading rusher, to 18 yards on four carries, while the Tigers’ sophomore tailback Grady Garcia rushed for a game-high 113 yards on 12 carries and scored three times.
“I was really pleased with the start we got, because that was not the way it went through most of this season,” said Roth, who has a career 521-74-2 record. “Most of the season in some of our bigger games, we started slow. It would be a little more of a struggle in the first half and we would pick it up and pull away in the second half. Today, it was kind of the opposite in a game like this against such a good team.”
Roth and Southern Columbia have now won six Class 1A state titles and this was their ninth Class 2A state championship. Roth is now 15-8 in state championship games, with this Farrell victory avenging the two state championship losses Roth had against Farrell in the 1995 and 1996 Class 1A state title games, when current Farrell coach Amp Pegues was the Steelers’ starting quarterback.
Roth said the key to this season was the emergence of the defensive line. Defensive tackles, senior John Quinton and junior Jaden Carter, and ends, junior Chase Williams and senior Ethan Makowski, made an immense improvement from the Tigers’ season-opening 49-27 loss to Wyomissing Area to the end of the year.
“They turned out to be one of our best front fours in our program’s history the way the season ended,” Roth said. “All four of them played really well. They played the run real well, but when we played teams that threw the ball effectively, and threw the ball a lot, they also got a lot of pressure on the quarterback. So whether it run or pass, they always set the tone defensively.”
Wherever Johnson went, there were three or four Tigers who met him. He hardly had any open space to run.
“Their entire offense was Johnson,” Chase Williams said. “You could tell what they were going to run, just by their offensive line. They would lean when they were pulling, they would lean when they would make their down blocks.”
With 4:32 left in the third quarter, Johnson caught a touchdown pass in the corner of the end zone on a fourth-and-12 with Farrell quarterback Aaron Pegues facing a ton of pressure in his face.
The game cosmetically looked closer, with the Steelers pulling within 28-14, but after Farrell held Southern Columbia to its first three-and-out, the Steelers could not get within a score, going backward on a sack and intentional grounding call, on their next possession.
Southern Columbia answered, made possible by a great 17-yard reception from junior Blaise Kissinger between two Farrell defenders on a fourth-and-seven to the Farrell 5. The catch set up the Tigers’ Brayden Andrews five-yard touchdown run with 8:15 to play, giving Southern Columbia a 36-14 lead after a two-point conversion, ending any Farrell comeback hopes.
The game appeared over by halftime.
Southern Columbia had its best half this season. The Tigers went into intermission leading, 28-8, and it seemed to be even a greater disparity than that. The Tigers scored on all four possessions over the first two quarters. Southern Columbia pounded Farrell for 239 yards of total offense to just 12 for Farrell.
The gaping difference came on the ground, where Southern Columbia plowed through the Steelers for 235 yards rushing to Farrell’s minus-25 yards rushing.
“To get that kind of a lead in the first half and build off that lead was huge for us,” Roth said. “It’s not typically what we have done this year. That was a key thing, for sure.”
Southern Columbia had 13 first downs to Farrell’s one.
In the first half, Southern Columbia ran off 39 plays and averaged 6.1 yards a play to Farrell’s nine plays, and a 1.3-yard average per play. The Tigers had the ball a staggering 18:29 in the first half, to Farrell’s 5:31.
The Tigers’ offensive line of senior left tackle John Quinton, senior left guard Greg Fulmer, junior center Aidyn McHale, junior right guard Traugh Cameron, sophomore right tackle Braylin Smith, and tight end Chase Williams made the difference. They kept sustained drives, keeping the Farrell offense off the field, and converted vital third and fourth downs using the edges.
Defensively, Southern Columbia put the clamps on Johnson, who came into the game as the state’s leading rusher, with 2,287 yards this season and 35 touchdowns, averaging 10.7 yards a carry. The Nebraska commit could not do anything when the game was in its competitive stage, being held to a mere three yards no two carries in the first half.
Meanwhile, Southern Columbia sophomore Grady Garcia, the youngest of the four Garcias who played for Roth and the Tigers, had 92 yards rushing on seven carries, including touchdown runs of 32, 25 and 1.
What changed the course of the game came on Farrell’s last drive of the first quarter. Trailing 14-8, Farrell was driving, reaching the Southern Columbia 24 in the last three minutes of the quarter. A false start pushed the Steelers back to the 29, putting them in a second-and-12 situation. An incompletion made it third-and-12, when Tigers’ linebacker Caius Morrow came crashing through to take down Farrell quarterback Aaron Pegues for a 17-yard loss on a strip sack, where Chase Williams was there to pounce on it at the Tigers’ 46.
“I saw the loose ball and I had to get that ball, that was my ball, and a bunch of guys jumped on me,” said Williams, laughing.
Southern Columbia converted the game’s first turnover into a 16-play, 9-minute, 14-second scoring drive.
The series featured a huge Ayden Hockenbroch 15-yard scramble on a third-and-goal from the Farrell 19, after a Tigers’ holding call. The next play, Brayden Andrews plunged into the end zone from five yards out for a 22-8 Southern Columbia lead.
The only Farrell score in the half was a 90-yard Jadon King-Vincent kickoff return after the Tigers took the opening drive for the first of Garcia’s three first-half touchdowns.
“Overall, my hat is off to Southern Columbia, they know how to play championship ball and they know how to get it done,” Farrell coach Amp Pegues said. “We just didn’t get it done today. Once they get into that offense, and we are reading our keys, and jumping their guards, that’s a tough team.
“They averaged over 300 yards rushing a game, and their scheme is tough. It took us a little while to catch the rhythm. We started to catch the rhythm in the second half, but they got that big lead on us and we tried to fight back. I’m proud of our guys. I will say this, we will be back here next year and we’ll see them again.”
Scoring Summary
(District 10) Farrell (13-3) 8 0 6 8-22
(District 4) Southern Columbia (15-1) 14 14 0 15-43
1st Quarter
SC – Grady Garcia 32 run (kick failed), 9:56
F – Jadon King-Vincent 90 kickoff return (Juelz Johnson run), 9:41
SC – Garcia 25 run (Ayden Hockenbroch run), 4:21
2nd Quarter
SC – Brayden Andrews 4 run (Jace Malakoski pass from Hockenbroch), 4:31
SC – Garcia 1 run (run failed), :19
3rd Quarter
F – Juelz Johnson 15 pass from Aaron Pegues (run failed), 4:32
4th Quarter
SC – Andrews 5 run (Chase Williams pass from Hockenbroch), 8:15
SC – Joey Williams 19 run (Preston Shadle kick), 2:01
F – Johnson 3 pass from Pegues (Nemo Jones from Pegues), :42
Joseph Santoliquito is a hall of fame, award-winning sportswriter who has been covering high school football since 1992 and is the president of the Boxing Writers Association of America. He can be followed on Twitter @JSantoliquito [twitter.com]. Follow EasternPAFootball.com on Twitter @EPAFootball [twitter.com]. Follow EasternPAFootball.com on Twitter @EPAFootball [twitter.com]