The Reporter (Lansdale, PA)

Rams top South behind 5 INTs

Pennridge wins 4th straight on Homecoming

- By Mike Cabrey mcabrey@21st-centurymed­ia.com @mpcabrey on Twitter

EAST ROCKHILL » Cooper Chaikin was confident Friday night was the start of bigger things.

“Nobody’s seen nothing yet,” he said. “There’s definitely more to come.”

Playing his first game since a preseason off the field injury, the Pennridge sophomore provided a much-needed boost to a secondary that struggled a week earlier against William Tennent, coming away with two of the Rams’ five intercepti­ons as they shut down Central Bucks South in claiming a 21-7 Suburban One League Continenta­l Conference win at Helman Field.

“He was our starting safety all year, gets hurts before our first game, he hasn’t played at all. And he’s pretty good player and he showed it tonight,” said Pennridge coach Jeff Hollenbach of Chaikin. “And so it was great to have him back there. So now I really think we’re back at full strength and Cooper really helped.”

“Nobody’s seen nothing yet. There’s definitely more to come.” – Pennridge’s Cooper Chaikin

The Rams’ offense scored on their first three drives to build a 21-0 halftime lead while their defense essentiall­y shut out the Titans (6-3, 3-2) — South’s points came on a fumble recovery in the third quarter — as Pennridge picked up a fourth consecutiv­e victory on Homecoming.

“We knew we could shut down the run we couldn’t get beat on the back end, we couldn’t let anybody get overtop,” Rams senior Joe Devine said. “We got our one sophomore safety (Chaikin) back, he finally got off an injury. He balled out — two intercepti­ons. So it’s big win, huge win.”

Devine, Nick Tarburton and Jadin Bass also had intercepti­ons as the Pennridge’ D bounced back from giving up 353 passing yards in its 35-26 win over Tennent last Friday to allowing the Titans just 46 yards through the air and 115 yards of total offense.

“We’re playing down to their level. It wasn’t right, something wasn’t right,” said Devine of the Tennent game. “But tonight, the energy was high, you could feel it in the air we are going to do something special. We came out here and performed.”

The performanc­e resulted in the Rams holding an opponent to seven points or less for the fifth time this season and South scoring its fewest points since it beat Souderton 7-0 in Week 5 of 2016.

“Those guys we were kind of preaching ball hawk all week. We figured they were going to try to throw the ball against us and we spent a lot of time on pass coverage,” Hollenbach said. “We spent probably half an hour more on passing coverage during practice than we usually do and it really paid off. (Defensive coordinato­r) Mike Barainyak did a great job again defensivel­y and for us to do the things we did defensivel­y, again, I’m just really proud.”

Ryan Garner ran 16 times for 115 yards and a touchdown while QB Zak Kantor was 13-of-21 passing for 118 yards withe one touchdown and one intercepti­on for Pennridge, which looks to better its spot in the District 1-6A tournament when it hosts Central Bucks East Friday. The Rams entered Friday eighth in the district rankings. CB South, which is home against Tennent Friday, came in ninth.

“I’m thinking we would be in the top eight if we win next week and get a home playoff game. We would love for these seniors to have a home playoff game,” Hollenbach said. “We’ve never had a home playoff game on this field at Pennridge.”

Ryan Shoch — CB South’s third-string quarterbac­k who made his first varsity start last Friday in the 21-20 win over Central Bucks West — completed 10-of-23 passes for 46 yards and five picks while also rushing seven times for 50 yards to pace the Titans, who have lost three of four since starting 5-0.

“They’re a good team. They obviously want to run the ball at you and they were able to do that in the first half,” said CB South coach Tom Hetrick of Pennridge. “I was a little disappoint­ed that we weren’t able to slow up some of the drives, I don’t even know if we made them punt in that first half. You can’t do that against good teams.

“And obviously when they own the ball like that you’ve got to take advantage of every opportunit­y that you get when you get the ball and we didn’t do that. We didn’t make the plays when we needed to and the better team won tonight.”

Devine intercepte­d Shoch’s first pass of the game, setting Pennridge up at the 50 and eight plays later Devine scored on an 11-yard TD run at 7:50 in the first quarter for a 7-0 Rams lead.

Pennridge pushed its advantage to 14-0 on its next series — a 13-play, 80-yard drive capped by Kantor hitting Devine for a 19-yard touchdown on a 4th and 5 at 11:20 in the second quarter.

“He was giving me the inside the whole time so I just gave him an outside move,” Devine said. “And Zak put it on the money.”

After a South three-andout, the Rams made it 21-0 when Kyle Schetter finished a 15-play, 61-yard drive with his one-yard touchdown run with 4:06 left before halftime.

The Titans cut the margin to 21-7 70 seconds into the third quarter as the teams combined to turn the ball over on three consecutiv­e plays. Dante Scipione picked off Kantor but Bass intercepte­d a Shoch throw in the end zone. But a high snap by the Rams at their own 20 sent the ball into the end zone, where Sean Charpentie­r corralled it for a touchdown at 10:50.

“They won the second half — not that we’re here for moral victories but they stepped and they finished strong so we’re going to build off of that,” Hetrick said.

South forced a Pennridge punt and drove the Rams 39 only to turn the ball over on downs as Tarburton tackled Ryan Watson for a two-yard loss on 4th and 1.

The Rams couldn’t tack on any points in the second half but did chew up plenty of clock, to using more than 11 minutes on two drives (6:13 and 5:05), the latter ending on an incompleti­on on 4th and Goal from the four.

“I was kind of conservati­ve with my calls, but we were playing ball control most of the time and again, I would have like to put up more points,” Hollenbach said. “We were down here a couple times and couldn’t score so that was a little disappoint­ing, but at the same time you’re sitting with a pretty good defense that we can rely on.”

 ?? DEBBY HIGH/FOR DIGITAL FIRST MEDIA ?? Pennridge running back Josh Pinkney scores a touchdown Friday night against CB South.
DEBBY HIGH/FOR DIGITAL FIRST MEDIA Pennridge running back Josh Pinkney scores a touchdown Friday night against CB South.
 ?? DEBBY HIGH/FOR DIGITAL FIRST MEDIA ?? Pennridge’s Ryan Garner scored a touchdown Friday night against CB South.
DEBBY HIGH/FOR DIGITAL FIRST MEDIA Pennridge’s Ryan Garner scored a touchdown Friday night against CB South.

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