How do Twin Valley Raiders turn a nightmare into a dream come true?
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It was a nightmare, no doubt, seeing Caileb Howse run for seven touchdowns and his Lampeter-Strasburg team put 56 points by halftime last month at Twin Valley Stadium. Still, Raiders coach Brett Myers doesn’t hide his eyes when he watches tape from that game.
“It’s real,” he said of the stunning 62-14 Week 9 loss. “It’s there on film. We’re not gonna act like it didn’t happen. They beat us, and they beat us quickly. In the end, that all happened and there’s no point in running from it.”
The fifth-seeded Raiders (9-2) can’t run and they can’t hide – not that they’d want to. As badly as the first meeting went they welcome a chance at the unbeaten and top-seeded Pioneers (11-0) tonight in a District 3 Class 4A semifinal.
Make no mistake, things did go badly for the Raiders against their Lancaster-Lebanon League Section 4 rivals. They had three negative plays, including a sack, and turned the ball over on downs on their first possession.
Moments later Howse was on his way to a 56-yard touchdown – his second of a night that would see him rush for 323 yards against what, statistically at least, was one of the best defenses in the league.
It was an extraordinary performance by Howse, a senior and first-year starter at quarterback who has made a strong case for L-L Player of the Year. He has rushed for 1,183 yards and 19 TDs, averaging 11.1 yards per carry. He has passed for 1,312 yards with 12 TDs and zero interceptions.
Last week, in a 42-7 quarterfinal win over Elco, he did his damage on the defensive end with three return touchdowns: One on a fumble, two on interceptions.
Seven offensive touchdowns in one game, three defensive scores in another? That’s a feat few football players at any level have ever accomplished.
“He’s a good football player,” Myers said. “I wouldn’t say he’s a quarterback; I wouldn’t say he’s a safety. I’d say he’s a football player and he’s good at what he does.”
“He’s just an explosive runner,” said his coach, Victor Ridenour. “He’s a great athlete. He’s sneaky fast. If you were to look at him you wouldn’t expect him to be able to run that way. He’s a good athlete, an extremely hard worker. He puts his nose down and gets after it.”
So how do the Raiders stop him? How do they flip a 48-point deficit in their favor? How do they tackle a team that’s shown virtually no weaknesses? A week after wrecking the Raiders the Pioneers ended Wyomissing’s 36-game home winning streak with a 20-7 victory that didn’t seem nearly that close.
“We’ve gotta out-block ’em and out-tackle ’em,” Myers said. “If you watch the film from that game we didn’t block very well and we definitely didn’t tackle very well. So we’ve gotta figure out a way to do that better and match their effort.”
The Raiders played Lampeter-Strasburg without two of their best players, Evan Johnson and Drew Engle, who split time at tailback and see time as defensive backs.
Johnson, who has scored more touchdowns than anyone in program history, became ill the day of the game and didn’t play that night or the following week. Engle, who set the program single-season rushing record last year as a sophomore, missed 10 weeks with a broken collarbone before returning for last week’s 47-19 quarterfinal win at Susquehanna Township.
Those two alone won’t be enough to turn the tide. The Raiders, who committed a season-high three turnovers in the first meeting, will have to play better across the board to stop a team that has demolished practically every team on its schedule.
The Pioneers are ranked No. 3 in the state after beating state-ranked teams – Twin Valley was No. 9, Wyomissing was No. 2 – in consecutive weeks.
Lampeter-Strasburg is allowing 8.0 points per game, lowest in District 3 and the lowest among all Class 4A teams in Pennsylvania.
The Pioneers have outstanding linebackers, led by senior Emory Fluhr, who has 106 tackles and is a leading contender for Section 4 Linebacker of the Year.
Dominic Brown went over 1,000 rushing yards last week; he has scored 20 touchdowns.
“They’ve got (good) guys everywhere,” Myers said. “They’re really good.”
No one is expecting the rematch to get out of hand. Then again, no one expected it to happen the first time, either.
“I didn’t see it going that way,” Ridenour said following that game. “I think most people didn’t see it going that way. It was just one of those nights when things really went in favor.”
“Those guys were rolling that night,” Myers said. “We’ve got to see how much in the last four weeks that we’ve closed that gap.”