Big Game Hunting: The WPIAL Football Four-Pack (with three missing)

By: Bruce Markey
Wednesday, December 14, 2011 | 1:05 PM

WOW! Things got pretty crazy in the semifinals and the District Seven teams suffered some close losses. Only one team remains holding the WPIAL banner, but that team is a pretty good team to have on your side, in Tom Nola’s Clairton Bears. This weekend another high school football season will come to a close, it has been so much fun, as they all are for me. Thanks for reading, thanks for listening, thanks for cheering, and most importantly thanks for caring. My best wishes to you MSA fans, and MSA staffers as well, for a blessed holiday season with your families, you deserve the best all the time, but hey sometimes you get me. Once more in 2011 let’s go Big Game Hunting!!!!

PIAA A CHAMPIONSHIP:

Clairton Bears (15-0) vs Southern Columbia (14-1) Friday December 16th 1:00 PM @ Hershey Park Stadium Broadcast on the MSA Sports Network by Mark Schaas and Brandon Showers.

There have been 17 PIAA single A championship games since 1994, one of these two teams has played in 15 of those games and when this game is played that number will become 17 participations in 18 state title games since 1994. Take a moment. Southern Columbia is the gold standard for any high school football program. The Tigers are (6-6) in state championship tilts winning in ’94, ’02, 03, ’04, ’05, and ’06, while losing in ’95, ’96, ’98, ’99, ’00, and ’01.

Clairton meanwhile has become the standard bearer for excellence around the state of Pennsylvania with back-to-back state titles, and a current win streak that is the longest in the nation at 46. A win Friday against Southern Columbia and the Bears would also establish a new mark for longest win streak ever by a member of the WPIAL. The seniors on Tom Nola’s football team are 61-2 heading into their 4th straight PIAA Championship game. That number is pretty tough to really comprehend. They will have played 64 football games in four seasons after Friday, for a team that did not make the playoffs to play 64 football games they would have to participate in eight football seasons. Carvan Thompson will start in his 64th straight football game for the Bears Friday. That is a record no one can ever break. That previous sentence is not hyperbole for emphasis, it is just a fact, no one can ever break that record, no one…EVER. 5000 years from now Carvan Thompson will hold the Pennsylvania state record for starts in a high school football career. Maybe someone will have tied it but they won’t have broken it.

Who knows maybe in those 5000 years someone will have figured out a way to stop Tyler Boyd from scoring at will against their football team. I doubt it. Boyd has been an unstoppable force in the backfield for the Bears all season long. Through 15 weeks he has carried 172 times for 2182 yards on the ground. He has caught 15 passes for 316 yards and he has scored 46 touchdowns and 18 two point conversions giving him an astronomical total of 312 points scored on the year. That is more than 94 of the 126 WPIAL football teams that participated in the 2011 season. He scored more than 74% of the TEAMS in the WPIAL this year, including many playoff teams. He scored more points this year than his defense has allowed over the past four seasons COMBINED (276). He is a junior, okay I am done with the bolding, promise.

Capri Thompson, the Bear quarterback is not a junior his splendid career as a high school football player will end Friday win or lose, Thompson like his teammates has known nothing but success in his prep career. For the 2011 season Thompson has completed 79 of 121 passes for 1701 yards and 15 touchdowns while only tossing four picks.

Guys like Trenton Coles, Terrish Webb, Devantae Gardlock, Reuben Kelly, Titus Howard, all have played their part in the greatness that has been the Bears football program, and greatness is the only word that fits. We here at BIG GAME HUNTING sincerely hope the entire Clairton community makes it to Hershey Park Stadium to salute this team and celebrate their accomplishments, because win or lose Friday they deserve nothing less than that. Congratulations to Tom Nola and EVERY SINGLE Bear that has gone through that program in the, this feat whether it continues or not, is phenomenal on soooo many levels.
Southern Columbia is going to come to play though, I hope the Bears realize that. The Tigers have not been to the state Championship game since 2006, and that’s a long dry spell for Jim Roth’s team.

The Tigers are led by a corps group of seniors, and have put up some pretty impressive numbers of their own for the 2011 campaign.

Senior quarterback Brad Fegley has completed 104 of 167 passes on the year for 1696 yards and 13 touchdowns, he has yet to throw an interception in 2011, that is an incredibly good thing considering the secondary he is going to face at Hershey on Friday afternoon.

Both of Fegley’s favorite targets are seniors as well. Keith Day has 44 catches for 692 yards and six scores, while fellow senior Matt Moore has caught 25 balls for 509 yards and three touchdowns. Moore is also one of the top rushers of the football for the Tigers, he is second on the team in carries (121), yards (1194) and rushing touchdowns with 19. The Southern Columbia leader on the ground is senior Tyler Levan with 201 carries for 1860 yards and 28 touchdowns, in all those touches Levan has only fumbled the football twice on the season. The Tigers take care of the football. They will need to against the Bears defense that like to take it away.

Southern Columbia plays a little defense as well. Moore is their leading tackler with 80 stops on the season including five sacks. Another senior in Jamie Slotterback has recorded 69 tackles and 5.5 sacks on the year. Day is a monster ball hawk in the secondary with nine interceptions on the year.

Tags: Clairton