Bayard Rustin hit North Penn with everything it had, even leading twice in the game.
But in the end, 28 unanswered points and 517 yards total offense by the Knights led to a 48-21 win over the Golden Knights Saturday Afternoon at Rustin
“That’s a good football team over there”, said North Penn Coach Dick Beck said of Rustin
“For a school of 13 hundred kids and we don’t recruit, I’m happy with the way our kids played,” said Rustin Coach Mike St. Clair.
Trailing 14-7, North Penn’s Kyle Mayfield scored on a 1 yard run on the first play of the second quarter and Brandon Mandes added his second of six extra points to tie the game at 14. Mayfield had 111 yard on nine carries before he left the game with a leg injury.
Then with what happened may have been the start of the crashing of Rustin’s dream occurred.
North Penn (9-2) recovered a Rustin fumble and drove to the Rustin 11, but Mandes was low on a 28 yard field goal attempt and Rustin temporarly dodged one bullet.
Rustin then drove out to the 40, eating up some clock but a poor 20 yard punt with the wind set the Knights up on the 38 yard line. North Penn needed nine plays, five of them passes, the last on a Eddie Posavec four yard touchdown pass from Dan Ersnt with four second remaing before halftime to take a 21-14 lead they would never relinquish.
North Penn then added two touchdowns in the third quarter by fullback Ralph Reeves on runs of four and one yard to increase the score to 35-14.
Rustin had 1 last glimmer of hope as Anthony Nash scored on a 77 yard pass from Mike DeLancey with 2:55 left in the third quarter to trim the North Penn lead to 35-21.
But any dreams Rustin had of getting back in the game were dashed by Dan Gevirtz.
Gevirtz is the starting wide receiver but also the back-up running back and went to that position when Mayfield went down.
All Gervitz did was run for 207 yards on 15 carries and score both Knight touchdowns in the fourth quarter on runs of 42 and 11 yards.
That’s been the theme all year”, said Beck. “One guy goes down, the next guy has to step up.”
Rustin scored 14 points in the first quarter on a Connor Burke 1 yard run and a 78 yard touchdown pass from DeLancey to Joe Palladino.
With the win, North Penn, the 11th seed hosts 14 seed and arch nemisis Neshaminy next Friday nite at Crawford Stadium.
2 Responses
@ Brian:
I hate to burst your bubble Brian, but NP’s QB was knocked out early 1st quarter. I’m afraid the score would have been much higher had he not. Sorry.
As we discussed before, playoffs are decided by a point system. Rather equitable I think. Note there was no 4 lose team in the playoffs. As a matter of fact, I believe there as only one 3 lose team in there ( upper dublin). Pennridge had to win their last 2 games to get in. Hopefully, next year.
It’s nice to see Pennridge held North Penn to 24 points. It goes to show the quality of football in the Continental Conference. There should be better qualifications for the playoffs.