Manheim Township dominates Cumberland Valley, 42-14
2024 Berks football coverage
presented by UECU
(This story was produced by LNP/Lancasteronline, and published in partnership with MikeDragoSports.com.)
By Mike Gross — LNP/Lancasteronline
MECHANICSBURG — For roughly 85% of Manheim Township’s season opener at Cumberland Valley Friday the Blue Streaks utterly dominated.
Some lapses here and there — particularly in pass coverage — kept it closer on the scoreboard than it seemed on the field, and finally, oddly, special teams were key to Township’s 42-14 victory in a season opener at Chapman Field.
A preponderance of this night’s evidence says the Blue Streaks, Lancaster-Lebanon League Section 1 champions and District 3 Class 6A finalists a year ago, will again be a force.
“I told the guys at halftime we were beating ourselves,” Township coach Mark Evans said, even though his club took a 21-14 lead to the break.
“It was really all correctable errors,” he said. “A team makes its most dramatic improvement from Week 1 to Week 2.”
As for CV, Township has now beaten it three straight times, including the District 3 playoffs. The Eagles are a big and traditionally-powerful football program that Evans this week called “a mirror image” of his own.
Township held CV to 20 rushing yards. The Streaks racked up 24 first downs, and got a big game from running back Declan Clancy, who had 120 rushing yards, 53 receiving yards and four touchdowns.
They got a very solid debut from senior quarterback Carson Weisser, who completed 11-of-21 throws for 202 yards and two scores.
The Streaks’ veteran offensive line was as advertised, and Township mostly won in the trenches on both sides.
But the Eagles had pass plays of 81, 39, 29, 28 and 28 yards, mostly on extended plays when the Township secondary failed to maintain assignments.
“That’s really the scramble drill, right,” Evans said. “We have some guys who are playing their way into experience, and they shot themselves in the foot.”
So, again, it fell to special teams to get Township comfortably by.
The Streaks forced a fumble on a kickoff return in a 7-7 game in the first quarter, and Township quickly turned that into a score, and a lead it would never give up, on Weisser’s 22-yard connection with Clancy.
Allan Feliciano started the second half with a cannon-shot 97-yard TD kickoff return.
Late in the third quarter, CV critically committed a roughing-the-punter penalty, keeping a Township drive alive which ended in Weisser’s 18-yard TD strike to Charlie Hill.
Four plays later Hill got Township’s second interception, and the Streaks closed the deal with a grinding, nine-play, penalty-slowed drive, Clancy refusing to be denied, pounding up the middle on third-and-goal from the 11.
“I wouldn’t say he’s small,” Evans said of Clancy, who’s listed at 5-10, 195. “He runs over people. Pound-for-pound, he’s one of the toughest kids I know.”
