GATEWAY HOPES TO PUT BULLY IN ITS PLACE
When Gateway coach Don Holl was trying to describe what his team faces this week in the PIAA semifinals, he went all old school TV.
“It’s like the old ‘Happy Days’ show when Richie Cunningham was going to get in a fight,” Holl said, dating himself to the 1970s and ’80s hit show. “Fonzie says you have to look tough and he’ll back down. So they’re about to fight and Richie says, ‘Fonz, the guy’s not backing down.’ And Fonzie says, ‘Oh, I forgot to tell you. Once in your life you have to hit someone. Until you do that, I don’t know if you can be confident.’”
Gateway is Richie Cunningham this week. The bully is Archbishop Wood. It would certainly be a happy day Friday if Gateway knocked off the Vikings.
Gateway plays Archbishop Wood in the PIAA Class 5A semifinals Friday, 3 p.m. at Altoona’s Mansion Park Stadium. It’s questionable whether this Archbishop Wood team is quite as strong as some others in recent years. Wood, a Philadelphia Catholic League team, has won five championships in eight years, been in a PIAA championship game seven of the past 11 years and won five titles. One of those championships came two years ago when Wood walloped Gateway, 49-14, in the title game.
But no matter if Wood is as good as past teams, the Vikings have a certain aura about them.
“Wood plays with a lot of confidence and a lot of swagger,” Holl said. “They think they’re good and they know they’re good. That’s the thing I hope we do. Even though we haven’t played as great as we can in the postseason, our guys still think they’re going to win. That’s a good thing to have in your pocket because our guys believe in themselves.”
So, in a sense Gateway is playing Wood’s tradition besides just playing the Vikings themselves. Gateway got an up close look at Wood two years ago in the PIAA final at Hersheypark Stadium. That Wood team was loaded with talent. The Vikings featured tight end-defensive end Kyle Pitts, who caught a touchdown pass and intercepted two passes in the game. Pitts is now at the University of Florida, one of the top tight ends in the country and was recently named one of 20 semifinalists for the Walter Camp Player of the Year award, which goes to the best player in college football, regardless of position. Wood also had standout running back-defensive back Nassir Peoples, who is now a defensive back at Virginia Tech.
This year’s Wood team is different. Kyle Adkins, in his second year as Wood’s coach, said no player has any scholarship offers from a major college. Wood is 9-3, with the losses coming to Peddie, N.J. (38-9) and two Philadelphia Catholic League teams – St. Joseph’s Prep (42-21) and Roman Catholic (20-6).
“We were definitely an inexperienced team at the start of the year,” Adkins said. “We graduated 27 seniors from last year. I hope we’ve improved. I think any player gets better with experience. For a lot of these guys, this was their first time getting varsity game experience. We’re hoping it’s paying dividends.”
Wood starts only three seniors on both offense and defense. Adkins believes his team is fairly balanced offensively, but in the PIAA quarterfinals last week, Wood had 300 rushing yards against Southern Lehigh.
Although Wood has had one of the top programs in the state the past decade, the WPIAL did find success against the Vikings only a year ago. Penn Hills knocked off the two-time defending champions, 20-13.
Adkins believes this Gateway team has some of the same characteristics of the Penn Hills 2018 team. Gateway features running backdefensive back Derrick Davis, ranked as one of the top juniors in the country. Davis missed much of the second half of the WPIAL championship game against Peters Township with an injured ankle, but he said Sunday he expects to be OK for the Wood game.
But Gateway has much more than Davis.
“I think it would be a pretty fair comparison with this team and last year’s Penn Hills team,” Adkins said. “They have playmakers all over the field. They have a bigtime running back, the quarterback(Bryson Venanzio) is very good and they’ve got a great defense that is big up front. And they have great special teams. I think you can even draw a comparison to their own team two years ago. Obviously, some of the names and faces have changed.”
Gateway will have to get back up from the high of winning a WPIAL championship.
“When the game’s over, you get a championship trophy and get gold medals, but there are a lot of other things that go with winning (the WPIAL) that you forget about,” Holl said. “I get invited down to Heinz Field for the next Steeler game. The kids get rings. You get a banner in the gym. I don’t want to sound cheesy, but it really is something.
“My wife says it all the time. That’s why we’re here (in Western Pennsylvania). I was the coach at Erie Cathedral Prep and I’m from there. But I always thought the WPIAL was the mecca of Western Pennsylvania football.”
Holl was also once the head coach at Seneca Valley. He still is a teacher at Seneca Valley.
“I wanted to become a teacher at a school and that was part of coming to the WPIAL,” Holl said. “But if you’re a high school football coach, who wouldn’t love doing it here in the WPIAL?”
Then again, a PIAA title would be awfully nice also. The winner of the GatewayWood game will play in the championship game against the winner of Cocalico and Cheltenham. The title game is Dec. 6 in Hershey.