EasternPAFootball.com Notebook: Eastern York senior smashes multiple rushing records; District 4 team scores early, often, ties a record; West York becoming YAIAA model of consistency

Alex Cooley said “Good Knight” to several rushing records Friday.

What Eastern York’s senior running back did in the Golden Knights’ victory over Hanover will go down in school, York County, District 3 and PIAA record books.

According to EY assistant coach Steve Kline, Cooley rushed for 500 yards and eight touchdowns on 26 carries in the Knights’ 62-37 victory over the Nighthawks. Both Cooley’s rushing yardage total and touchdowns scored establish new single-game school records for EY, but Cooley’s performance doesn’t stop there.

Oh no. There’s more.

The 500 rushing yards establishes a new single-game state rushing record, previously held by Harbor Creek Huskies’ running back Stephen Blose, who rushed for 488 yards in a game in 2005. The mark is also the new District 3 single-game rushing record, supplanting the 442 yards totaled by Lancaster Catholic’s Roman Clay against Dallastown earlier this season.

Lastly, according to the York Daily Record/Sunday News, Cooley holds the YAIAA career rushing yardage record, which presently is 4,559 yards (and counting, it should be noted). Littlestown’s Jeremiah Collins rushed for 4,433 yards in his career for the Thunderbolts.

Cooley, by the way, leads all running backs in the state with 1,405 yards in five games. (And for those of you who never heard of Eastern York before, it’s a AAA school located in Wrightsville, a town along the Susquehanna River about a mile west of Columbia).

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Sticking with the York County trend – has there been a York-Adams big school team as consistent as West York Area has been since Ron Miller took over as head coach in 2006? Miller, who arrived in York County after spending time at Susquehanna University in Selinsgrove, has helped lead the Bulldogs to a 5-0 start in 2012.

It’s the Bulldogs’ second 5-0 start in the last four years, as the blue and white also started 5-0 in 2009 and wound up finishing 11-2 and just missing a return trip to the District 3 AAA championship game opposite Manheim Central. That year, Susquehanna Township, led by dual-threat Ben Dupree, upended the Bulldogs, 7-6.

West York has, in fact, started 4-1 or better for five of the last six years. The lone exception was a 3-2 start in 2010.

Before anybody points out Northern York, a York County AAA program based in Dillsburg, which posted a 56-13 overall record (.811) overall from 2003-07 and made regular apperances in the D3 AAA quarterfinals in that span, remember this: Northern is a representative of the Mid-Penn Conference’s Colonial division, not the York-Adams.

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Milton Area generated a little attention last fall when it rattled off six consecutive victories after an 0-5 start to its season and reached the District 4 AAA championship game, becoming the third known program in the state to pull off both a five-game winning streak and losing streak in the same season since 2003.

Friday night, Milton did something to place itself among state leaders in one historical scoring category.

The Black Panthers’ 48-point first quarter against Carson Long ties the unofficial state record for most points scored in one quarter, matching a feat previously established by District 9 rep Clarion Area in 2000 and then again by McKeesport of the WPIAL in 2008. Milton wound up defeating Carson Long, 73-3. The Warriors’ field goal, in the second quarter, came on a 3rd down play.

Milton, Clarion and McKeesport’s 48-point first quarters are unofficially tied for the 11th-most points scored in one quarter in the nation. There is a four-way tie for seventh place (49 points), and the national record for points in a quarter is 75.

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Schuylkill Valley’s 5-0 start is most unprecedented – in the Panthers’ 40-year football history, they’ve never started 5-0, let alone 4-0. Schuylkill Valley puts that start on the line Friday night against fellow unbeaten Berks Catholic.

Sticking with Berks County – Mike Drago of The Reading Eagle tweeted an interesting stat involving Hamburg High School. The Hawks recorded a new school single-game record 639 yards rushing in a victory over Kutztown Friday, placing three backs with 170+ yards each. Hamburg’s Joe Raffensperger and Montay Berger each have more than 600 yards rushing, making them one of six programs with a pair of 600+-yard rushers, joining Plymouth-Whitemarsh (1), Nazareth (11), Tri-Valley (11), Juniata Valley (6) and Curwensville (9).

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How about the tear that Old Forge has been on lately? The Blue Devils have demolished two teams I’d ranked ahead of them (Dunmore and Riverside) by a combined margin of 75-7 over the last two weeks. Seems their present No. 3 ranking is much, much more befitting.

Senior running back Brian Tomasetti has been one of the Blue Devils’ primary spark plugs offensively, having already scored 16 touchdowns to go along with 899 yards rushing. His 217 yards and six touchdowns against Riverside only further solidified him as a legit candidate to watch for a potential All-State nomination in Class A come later in the year.

Tomasetti, in case you were wondering, is on pace to finish the regular season with 32 rushing touchdowns.

Looking over the Blue Devils’ remaining schedule, only one more “toughie” game remains – and that’s against Lackawanna Trail. A 10-0 regular season is very, very realistic for the defending D2 Class A champion Blue Devils, who are averaging 44.6 points per game.

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Raise your hand if, through five games, you thought Wellsboro, a Class AA school from the Northern Tier, would ever be ranked ahead of Mount Carmel in the District 4 AA playoff point standings this 2012 season. The Hornets (3-2) are seventh and the Red Tornadoes, who have lost three straight games, are eighth.

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La Salle College High School advanced one slot in the USA-Today Super 25 prep football rankings to No. 23 in the nation.

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Plymouth-Whitemarsh of the Suburban One League’s American Division is off to a 4-1 start and averaging 295.2 yards rushing per game. Seniors Corey Kelly and Terry Brown have teamed up to average 246.6 of those rushing yards per game, or 83.5 percent of the Colonials’ season rushing output.

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Northwest Area’s Tony Politz has been a big, big reason why the Rangers are off to a 3-2 start to its 2012 campaign. He’s already run for 825 yards and nine touchdowns in five games for the Rangers and 2,235 yards and 22 scores in his career.

At his current pace of 165 yards rushing per game, Politz is on track to become the second Ranger running back to hit 3,000 career rushing yards in the last half-decade. Bret Rutkoski, a key offensive leader on the Rangers’ District 2 Class A championship team in 2009, holds the program record with 4,028 yards.

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In its 69-7 demolition of Lebanon Friday night, Manheim Central rushed for 585 yards and scored all 10 of its touchdowns for the game on the ground. It spiked the Barons’ per game rushing average from 184.3 yards to 267.6. As a team, the Barons have already scored 19 touchdowns on the ground through five 2012 games – a keeper stat when you reflect on the fact that Manheim Central scored 20 rushing touchdowns in its entire 11-game 2011 season, which ended with an opening-round playoff loss to Palmyra.

Also in the Lancaster-Lebanon League, Elizabethtown snapped a 17-game losing streak with a 14-13 victory over Conestoga Valley.

Follow Josh Funk on Twitter @Funk_pafb.