Cole Smerecki & Coventry coach Rick Hunter
POTTSTOWN PA — It was hard to say goodbye, as it always is when a team wraps up a great season that they were looking forward to continuing.
Coventry Christian School coach Rick Hunter was faced with that dilemma Friday night.
His team came back from what seemed like an impossible deficit to close within a tying score in the last minute, before losing to a special player, Aizen Zuchegno, and a special team, Model Secondary School for the Deaf (Md.), 44-38, in the Keystone State Football League semifinals for eight-man football.
Model will advance to the finals against the winner of the Girard College-Maryland School for the Deaf next week.
For Coventry Christian, only in its fourth season, it ended what was a very successful season, and for a special player, too, Coventry junior Cole Smerecki, who rushed for a team-high 116 yards on 16 carries, caught a team-high 8 passes for a game-high 69 yards, and scored three touchdowns.
It was a real show under the buzzing makeshift portable lights at Coventry between Model’s Zuchegno and Coventry’s Smerecki. Between the two of them, they were involved with nine of the game’s 11 scores. Zuchegno, a sophomore quarterback with speed and skill, rushed for a game-high 158 yards on 20 carries, scored two touchdowns and threw for three.
What was unique about Smerecki’s situation is this season marked the first time he had played football since fifth grade.
It didn’t look like it.
Smerecki got some help, he made sure to say, namely offensive linemen Brennan Bradley, Nico Marasco and Caleb Hughes. They cleared the way. And quarterback Lorenzo Miro came alive in the second half to throw three touchdowns in leading Coventry back from a 44-22 deficit with 6:28 to play.
“I knew going into tonight (Zuchegno) was going to be a factor, because he didn’t play against us the first time (a 22-8 Coventry victory),” said Hunter, who is in his second year as head coach and fourth overall coaching the Eagles. “Cole is a junior who has done a really good job for us this year. This was a resilient group. We didn’t really know what to expect, but by Week 3, I saw us starting to hit our stride and it was pretty amazing.”
Smerecki was at the eye of that. He rushed for a single-game school record 264 in a 36-0 win over Dryden (NY) last week. Ironically, he had 264 all-purpose yards against Model Friday night.
And this all came after a friend of his talked him into playing eight-man football this season.
“I last played football in grade school, so it’s about six years since I last played,” said Smerecki, a standout basketball player. “This is a very different game. I loved playing with the guys and for this community. My first love is basketball, but football is something I’m thinking about.
“Football taught me through the coaches and the players who have been playing their whole lives that you get kicked and you have this great community to pick you up. I got kicked, punched, elbowed, forearmed, everything in a fight. I scored on a kickoff and got shoved in the back after I scored tonight. You get up and get ready for the next play.”
Smerecki had no idea he would be as good as he turned out. He did make sure he mentioned his teammates and coaches. He said he is going to remember this season.
“I’ll always remember the guys I played with, not so much the accolades,” he said. “I know we lost, and that hurts, but I’ll always remember this. This was a great experience. I’ve grown to like football, it’s an environment like no other.”
For Zuchegno, speaking through an interpreter, winning meant possibly meeting rival Maryland School for the Deaf.
Coventry beat Model earlier this season, 22-8, with Zuchegno on the sideline.
“The last time I watched (the Coventry game) and learned from them, and this is the first time we won a playoff game,” Zuchegno said. “We wanted to come in and give them our all. We want to play Maryland School for the Deaf, because we haven’t beaten them in I think 20 years. If we can keep playing like this, working together as a team, we can win that game.”
Scoring Summary
Model 6 8 22 8-44
Coventry Christian 8 0 14 16-38
1st Quarter
CC – Lorenzo Miro 4 run (Nathaniel pass from Miro), 4:32
M – Aizen Zuchegno 52 run (run failed), 2:54
2nd Quarter
M – Donovan Schneck 2 run (Matt Wheeler pass from Zuchegno), 11:17
3rd Quarter
M – Zuchegno 78 kickoff return (Schneck run), 11:47
CC – Cole Smerecki 16 pass from Miro (Miro run), 8:49
M – Drake Teesdale 12 pass from Zuchegno (run failed), 5:20
CC – Christian Brown 30 pass from Miro (pass failed), 3:59
M – Matt Wheeler 36 pass from Zuchegno (Teesdale pass from Zuchegno), 2:05
4th Quarter
M – Wheeler 11 pass from Zuchegno (Wheeler pass from Zuchegno), 6:28
CC – Smerecki 79 kickoff return (Miro run), 6:16
CC – Smerecki 13 pass from Miro (Smerecki run), 3:14
Joseph Santoliquito is an award-winning sportswriter who has been covering high school football since 1992 and is the president of the Boxing Writers Association of America. Follow EasternPAFootball.com on Twitter @EPAFootball.