Pine-Richland’s defense overlooked in title run

Mike Mastroianni, Quaker Valley’s athletic director, also is a Quaker Valley alum and fully appreciated how unlikely this season was because of everything that happened.

“This is just unreal,” Mastroianni said. “We had 65-year-old guys from the school crying over this. The whole thing is just unbelievable. To me, even how it played out in the championship with the weather was unbelievable. When you’re a kid, you like to play in the snow. This was like the perfect snow.”

Veshio’s final game

John Tortorea resigned as Quaker Valley’s coach in August and Jerry Veshio took over. Veshio, 65, hadn’t coached high school football since the 1980s and was the Quakers’ PA announcer before agreeing to become the coach on an interim basis — for only one year. Winning a PIAA title has not changed Veshio’s mind about coachingonly one season.

“Unless Mike [Mastroianni] puts a few more zeroes on my contract,” Veshio said, kiddingly. “Seriously, though, I’m not coming back. My intention was never to do this more than a year. Maybe I steered the ship some and hopefully I pulled it in the right direction. Obviously, it panned out pretty good.”

Kennedy vs. Pryor

Robert Kennedy, Jeannette’s do-it-all senior, had a season to remember, leading the Jayhawks to the PIAA Class 1A title with a victory Thursday against Homer-Center. Kennedy’s versatility and dual-threat ability was similar to that of Terrelle Pryor, who led Jeannette to its previous title in 2007.

Now nobody is ready to say Kennedy is as good as Pryor in 2007, but the similarities in production are evident. Kennedy finished with 1,356 yards rushing and 1,462 yards passing. Pryor had 1,899 yards rushing and 1,889 passing. Pryor threw for 23 touchdowns and Kennedy 25. Pryor scored 35 touchdowns and Kennedy 29.

By the way, Jeannette coach Roy Hall was the offensive coordinator for the 2007 team.

Attendance

The six games drew a total of 14,127 fans. The largest crowd was Saturday for the Class 3A championship (3,592).