Five Fast Friday Football Facts for Week 2
2024 Berks football coverage presented by
Utilities Employees Credit Union
1
Former Wilson tailback Jami Sands gets his first crack at ending Exeter’s stranglehold over Boyertown.
Sands is in his first season as Bears head coach. He was an assistant at Wilson the past four seasons and at Manheim Township for eight seasons before that.
The Eagles have won 10 straight in the series and lead 12-2; the Bears’ last win came in 2000.
Sands was the leading rusher for Wilson’s Lancaster-Lebanon League Section 1 championship team in 1995, going for 1,594 yards, at the time second-most ever by a Bulldog. He was inducted into the Wilson Hall of Fame in 2012.
He went on to play safety at Kutztown University.
Sands lost his head coaching debut last week to Upper Perkiomen, 31-21.
2
Muhlenberg and Reading High first played for the “Battle of the Border Trophy” in 1974.The Red Knights won the first six meetings; the Muhls have won 11 of the last 14.
Twice, in 2021 and 2018, the Muhls avoided a winless season by beating the Red Knights in the final game of the season.
The game was traditionally played as the season finale; that change when both schools returned to the Lancaster-Lebanon League for the 2022 season. Reading is in Section 1, Muhlenberg in Section 2, so the meetings are now non-league games.
3
Doug Dahms will experience his 49th home opener Friday when Wilson plays Plymouth-Whitemarsh.
Dahms is in his 19th season as Bulldogs head coach, has won a program-record 186 games and has an .816 winning percentage that ranks No. 1 in Berks history.
Dahms spent 30 seasons as a Wilson assistant, under John Gurski, Gerry Slemmer, and Jim Cantafio.
Including his wins as an assistant, he has been on the sidelines for 492 of Wilson’s 601 victories.
4
Fleetwood’s Jason Petion averaged 25.4 yards per carry, Twin Valley’s Evan Myers 22.4 per carry, and Exeter’s Jayden Zandier 18.1 per carry in Week 1.
Those are the three highest averages in the Lancaster-Lebanon League for ballcarriers who topped 100 yards.
That figure’s not a huge stretch for Zandier, who averaged 10.7 yards per carry in rushing for 1,358 yards and earning All-State honors last season.
Myers averaged 7.4 yards per carry as a junior.
Petion got just 55 carries last season; most of the touches out of the Tigers’ backfield went to Czion Brickle. He showed what he could do in a 48-12 win over Kutztown, rushing for 178 yards on seven carries, including a 45-yard TD.
5
Longtime Inter-County League rivals Daniel Boone and Schuylkill Valley met Thursday for the first time since 2005.
The Blazers and Panthers met nearly every season before the I-C was split into two divisions in 2001. They have been in different sections ever since.
Daniel Boone leads the series 21-10-1.
The series took a hiatus from 1992-96 when Schuylkill Valley suspended its program.
