After winning Big East title, battle-tested Gateway aims to make postseason run

By: Michael Love
Sunday, October 29, 2023 | 11:01 AM

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The Gateway football team left no doubt as to who was the king of the Big East Conference when it rolled to a 48-20 victory over Norwin in the conference finale Oct. 20.

The Gators collected 369 total yards.

They got 219 yards through the air and touchdown passes from senior Brad Birch to junior Kenny Lewis (2) and seniors Steven Jenkins and Jaquon Reynolds, added rushing scores from Birch and Reynolds, and also scored on a Lewis 88-yard punt return.

The defense recorded seven sacks and got interceptions from Lewis and senior Donovan Biggs

“This was pretty special,” coach Don Holl said.

“This senior group wants to leave their legacy, and bringing home the conference championship in a pretty tough conference hopefully is a great start to that.

“The teams we had to beat are rivals who are well-coached and have a lot of talent. It’s not easy to do, and we feel a strong sense of accomplishment and pride in being able to do it.”

The next step for Gateway begins Friday as the Gators open the WPIAL Class 5A playoffs. They were 5-4 overall heading into a nonconference clash against WPIAL Class 6A power Central Catholic last Friday to close out the regular season.

The playoff pairings were then slated to be released Saturday afternoon.

Holl said it is always a challenge to make a run in any playoff tournament. Last year, Gateway owned the No. 4 seed and hosted No. 5 Upper St. Clair in the quarterfinals. The game went down to the wire before the Panthers pulled out a 24-21 win.

USC made it to the title game and lost to No. 2 Pine-Richland.

Holl said this year’s challenging schedule, factoring in the conference teams, the early matchups and games against McKeesport and Central Catholic, should help his team when it goes into playoff-pressure situations.

“It might be cliché, but there is that saying, ‘Iron sharpens iron,’” Holl said.

“We were certainly disappointed we weren’t able to win the game against McKeesport (38-28, Oct. 13), but the good news was that we got to face another high-quality opponent in a playoff atmosphere.”

Birch owned 17 touchdown passes through the Norwin victory. Reynolds totaled seven rushing scores, and Lewis led the way with six touchdown receptions.

Holl said he was impressed with the way his players kept focused and were able to respond after a tough 0-3 start.

“There was a little bit of everything there,” Holl said.

“Certainly, we had concerns. We weren’t playing particularly well, and we had some guys out of the lineup. We hoped that we could weather the storm. Everybody had confidence that we could turn it around and start winning, but like I said, there were concerns.

“We were not expecting the start that we had. Every group is different. You may have a lot of returning players, but until the whole group is together and you see the total picture, you don’t know what to expect sometimes. This group had not been through that, so we weren’t sure how they would react, but the vibe was still pretty good.”

Holl said one thing that the team was able to hang their hats, or helmets, on was the fact that they setbacks were in nonconference games.

“We had the conference right in front of us,” Holl said.

“It would’ve been different if we lost two or three conference games and had hurt our chances to make the playoffs or put ourselves in an uphill position to make a wild card. There wasn’t a finality to it because we still had a lot to play for in the conference. When we got into conference play, we wanted to control what we could control, and we were able to do that.”

Gateway was outscored 81-15 in nonconference losses to Class 6A Mt. Lebanon and Class 5A foes Woodland Hills and North Hills.

Birch missed both the Woodland Hills and North Hills games because of injury sustained in a car accident.

He returned against Franklin Regional to start Big East play, and he and his Gateway teammates took off.

Gateway scored 44 against Franklin Regional, 49 against Plum, 63 against Hempfield, and 31 against Penn-Trafford in the battle for the Victory Bell as the Gators roared back to clinch the conference title.

The victory over Norwin finalized the perfect conference slate and got the team back on track after the setback to McKeesport.

“The outcome wasn’t what we wanted (against McKeesport), but a lot of guys took some good things away from that,” Holl said.

Michael Love is a TribLive reporter covering sports in the Alle-Kiski Valley and the eastern suburbs of Pittsburgh. A Clearfield native and a graduate of Westminster (Pa.), he joined the Trib in 2002 after spending five years at the Clearfield Progress. He can be reached at mlove@triblive.com.

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