Wyomissing cruises into PIAA semis
JERMYN » His head coach wasn’t particularly impressed with everything he saw, but Wyomissing quarterback Zach Zechman gave his team high marks for its performance in a PIAA Class 3A quarterfinal Friday night against unbeaten Lakeland.
“That’s about as much as we can do in a state quarterfinal game,” said Zechman, who intercepted a pass, recovered a fumble, threw a touchdown pass and ran for one in the unbeaten Spartans’ 47-0 victory. “You definitely don’t expect that in a state quarterfinal.”
The Spartans (8-0) were dominant from the opening play, when they surprised the Chiefs (5-1) with a pooch kick, then got a fumble recovery from Jason Gartner to begin the carnage.
That was the first of six takeaways for the Spartans, who led 33-0 at the half and put the mercy rule into effect with their first possession of the third quarter.
“I don’t think we played the best we could on offense,” said Zechman, who also plays safety, “but when you put a bunch of plays like that together you can go up fast.”
Zechman intercepted a pass at the 20 on Lakeland’s first offensive possession and linebacker Darren Brunner took a pick back 55 yards for a TD later in the opening half to make it 27-0.
“They definitely came out a step slower on the fourth possession than they did the first,” Zechman said of the Chiefs. “That’s when you capitalize, and Darren did a great job on that, with the pick six.”
In between there were a pair of Jordan Auman touchdown runs (36 and 16 yards), and finally Zechman’s 24-yard TD pass to tight end Aiden Mack in the final minute of the first half.
“They had that game from hell where the first three times you get the ball you fumble it,” Wyomissing coach Bob Wolfrum said of the District 2 champion Chiefs. “There’s not a way you beat a team that’s even with you when you turn the ball over the first couple times you have it. I think we were better than them, but it made it easy when they just turned it over like that.”
The Spartans (8- 0), ranked No. 2 in the state, have outscored their opponents 81-9 in the first half of their three postseason games.
Maybe the District 3 champs will find a little more competition next week, when they host a PIAA Class 3A semifinal at the A-Field. No one’s given them a game yet.
Wyomissing will play either District 4 champ Danville (7-1) or District 12 champ Archbishop Carroll (2-2) next week. Those teams play Saturday at Danville.
Friday’s win was Wyomissing’s first in the PIAA Tournament since beating Montoursville 45-28 in a 2014 quarterfinal. It lost to Dunmore the following week 23-21.
The Spartans greased the skids Friday with an opportunistic defense, which had the Chiefs on the run from the outset. They dominated play in the box, stuffing the running game and forcing quarterback Dominick Spartaro to escape the pocket. He completed some short passes into the flats, but never had time to look down field. He was sacked twice in the first half and flushed from the pocket half-a-dozen other times.
“Our defense is special,” said Wolfrum after watching them hold the Chiefs to 111 total yards in recording their fifth shutout of the season.
They held Gio Spataro, the Chiefs’ all-time rushing leader with over 4,000 yards, to just 25 yards on eight carries.
“I think we put together a great team performance on defense,” said Zechman. “They have a great player (Maryland tight end recruit CJ Dippre), and we we keyed a lot of stuff off him. We knew what passes were coming when he was in certain positions and our coaches put us in position to put us in the right places to get those coverage sacks.”
The Spartans put it away quickly in the second half. Fullback Evan Niedrowski broke loose for a 27-yard run on the opening play of the third quarter and Zechman ended the eight-play drive with a 4-yard TD run.