Jeannette football pulls away for WPIAL Class A 1st-round playoff win against Bentworth

By: Paul Schofield
Friday, October 31, 2025 | 11:10 PM

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It has been quite a week for the Bentworth athletic program.

The boys and girls soccer teams celebrated WPIAL championships Thursday.

Could the seventh-seeded football team celebrate its second WPIAL Class A playoff win Friday against No. 10 Jeannette?

That answer was no.

The Jayhawks played the spoiler, scoring 21 points in the fourth quarter to pull away for a 38-24 victory.

Jeannette (8-3) will now face No. 2 Clairton on Nov. 7 at a site and time to be determined. Clairton defeated Monessen, 50-0.

Bentworth (8-3) hung around for three quarters with Jeannette before the Jayhawks, thanks to a Kymon’e Brown 11-yard touchdown run and Noah Sunder’s 10-yard blocked punt return, pulled away.

Jeannette’s defense did not allow the WPIAL’s leading rusher, Ben Hays, to get loose.

He scored three touchdowns, rushed for 73 yards on 16 carries, caught two passes for 57 yards and returned a kickoff 68 yards. Hays entered the game rushing for 1,757 yards and needed 202 to reach 4,000 yards in his career.

The Jayhawks defense came up big when needed.

“Hays is a tough player,” Jeannette coach Tommy Paulone Jr. said. “We just had to overcome the environment.

“We outlasted them in all three phases for the game. Special teams, the blocked punt, turned the game around. That’s what we do.”

The score was tied, 17-17, heading into the fourth quarter.

Brown took a high snap from center and got outside the Bentworth defense for an 11-yard score and a 24-17 lead.

The Jayhawks thought they recovered a muffed kickoff, and the officials originally ruled that Jeannette had recovered.

But after the officials met, they ruled an inadvertent whistle, and Jeannette had to re-kick.

The call fired up the Jayhawks defense, and they forced a three-and-out by Bentworth.

On fourth down, McAlister Steele broke through the line and blocked the punt, and Sunder picked up the bouncing ball and returned it 10 yards to make it 31-17.

“We were a little lackadaisical on our line,” Bentworth coach David Pordash said. “That blocked punt turned everything around. It put us behind the eight ball.

“We had some bad personal fouls in the second half. You cannot have that. We were not on our game.”

Bentworth went three-and-out on its next possession, and Jeannette quickly stretched its lead to 38-17 when Nick Mendoza raced 40 yards for a touchdown.

Hays did have one more thrill for the home fans. He took a pass in the flat and broke a few tackles and raced 60 yards for a touchdown to close the scoring.

Brown had a big game for Jayhawks. He ran for 132 yards and a score, completed 8 of 16 passes for 138 yards and a touchdown and he intercepted a pass.

Bentworth turned the ball over three times. Mendoza also intercepted a pass.

“The environment is different in the playoffs,” Paulone said. “The lights are brighter. Bentworth was fired up, and they came out swarming.

“We had a do-not-blink mentality. I could not be prouder of the staff and the players.”

Jeannette led 9-3 at halftime as Mahji Sanders scored on a 1-yard plunge and Steele booted a 34-yard field goal on the final play of the half.

Then the teams started trading touchdowns in the second half. Hays scored on runs of 2 and 9 yards, and Jeannette junior receiver Jayce Powell split those scores with an 11-yard touchdown catch.

The last time Bentworth hosted to a playoff game was in 1998, when they lost to South Side, 21-12.

The only WPIAL win the Bearcats had was in 2005 when they defeated Mapletown, 35-34, in overtime.

“I am so proud of this team,” Pordash said. “We won two games two years ago. We won eight this year, and we are turning the program around.”

The teams played four times in the mid-1990s when they were in Class 2A. Jeannette won the first three matchups: 53-0 in 1994, 51-8 in 1995, and 33-0 in 1996. Bentworth won 21-0 in 1997. They also played in 2014 and 2015 with the Jayhawks winning 62-20 and 62-0.

Jeannette now leads the series 6-1.

Paul Schofield is a TribLive reporter covering high school and college sports and local golf. He joined the Trib in 1995 after spending 15 years at the Daily Courier in Connellsville, where he served as sports editor for 14 years. He can be reached at pschofield@triblive.com.

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