Familiar foes Freeport, Quaker Valley hope to gain momentum after early-season losses

By: Michael Love
Wednesday, September 4, 2024 | 6:30 PM

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The Freeport and Quaker Valley football teams are no strangers to one other.

Friday’s 7 p.m. kickoff at Freeport Area Athletic Stadium will mark the third time in as many seasons the Quakers and Yellowjackets will meet in nonconference play.

Freeport hopes to continue its dominance in the recent series — it won 38-6 last year and 61-7 in 2022 — whereas Quaker Valley seeks to break through in the overall series that includes two additional games in 2010 and 2011.

“They have a really talented group of players,” Yellowjackets veteran coach John Gaillot said.

“No. 6 (junior quarterback/athlete/defensive back Ben McHenry) and No. 24 (senior running back/linebacker Jack Diemert) really stand out for them. We have to make sure we have a good game plan in place to stop them.”

Diemert led the Quakers in rushing last year with 1,046 yards and five touchdowns. He added three receiving scores.

“Defensively, they fly around and get to the football,” Gaillot said.

“They are very similar to our style of playing fast. It will definitely be a challenge to figure out how to move the ball against them.”

Freeport (1-1) hopes to bounce back from a 21-7 loss on the road at Derry. The teams played to a scoreless tie in the first half before the Trojans got on the board first in the third quarter. The Yellowjackets responded as quarterback Drew Ross found Owen Neistein for a 31-yard touchdown to tie the score.

It was Ross’ second passing TD in as many games to start the season.

However, Derry made the most of its opportunities in the fourth quarter, scoring twice to pull away for the win.

“Derry is a pretty solid team,” Gaillot said. “That game is on me. I didn’t prepare them well enough.”

Gaillot said his players were pretty positive in turning the page when they met Sunday and began preparing for Quaker Valley (0-1).

“We always say that a game is in the past, and all we can do is learn and build from it and work to be better,” Gaillot said.

“We looked at all the mistakes that we made against Derry and the opportunities that we left on the field. Defensively, I felt we played a pretty solid game for the second week in a row. We just have to work on cleaning up our penalties. We had just too many that stopped our momentum when we would try to get something going.”

Jason Cappa, a Riverview graduate, knows all about Freeport football, not just from facing the Yellowjackets the past two years as Quakers head coach but from also when he played for the Raiders in the early- to mid-1990s.

“Freeport has hard-nosed, physical kids who are disciplined and put in a lot of time to get better. That doesn’t change from year to year,” said Cappa, whose team lost 7-0 to Freedom in the Week Zero season opener Aug. 23.

“That discipline carries over to wins a majority of the time. It was unusual to see them not make the WPIAL playoffs last year. We saw them Week 2 last year, and they put it to us. I know they have a lot of juniors and are sort of young from last year, but they don’t play like it. When you have a coach like John who runs a stable program and does things the right way, that is what you get.”

Quaker Valley was not able to get its offense on track in the loss to Freedom in Week Zero. The Quakers managed just 74 total yards.

Diemert fronted the rushing attack with 13 carries, but he was limited to 34 yards.

“Being a young team ourselves, I wanted to see how we were going to compete, how we were going to handle adversity and what was our character was going to be as we went through a game,” Cappa said.

“As with any team in Week Zero, we came out of there seeing a lot of good things and some other things we needed to work on. The things we needed to work on were coachable and correctable mistakes.”

Cappa hoped to see improvement from his players in last Friday’s game against Keystone Oaks, but Mother Nature didn’t let them play. They were one of close to a dozen WPIAL nonconference contests canceled and not rescheduled.

Lightning prevented the game from starting, and no improvement in the forecast led the coaches and game officials to halt the proceedings.

“It was upsetting for a lot of people,” Cappa said. “We have juniors and seniors who want to play college football, and that’s a game film and statistics they won’t have. But we talk all the time to our kids about handling adversity however it comes. They’ve done a good job with that and are doing a good job focusing on Freeport this week.”

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.

Tags: Freeport, Quaker Valley