Five Fast Friday Football Facts for Week 7
2024 Berks football coverage presented by
Utilities Employees Credit Union
1
Reading and McCaskey meet Friday for the 102nd time in a series that began in the leather helmet days – 1892.
Grover Cleveland – who at 260 pounds would’ve been a left tackle, had he played — was the U.S. President at the time.
The Red Knights lead the series but have won less than half the games; they’re 49-47-5 after last year’s 34-28 loss.
In 2003 McCaskey cost Reading a perfect regular season with a 24-21 Week 10 win. A week later Al Wolski’s Red Knights beat the Tornado 21-14 in a district playoff semifinal.
Current Red Knights coach Troy Godinet was a senior on that team.
2
Conrad Weiser’s Donovan Gingrich(.746), Exeter’s Riley Martinez (.716), and Schuylkill Valley’s Logan Nawrocki (.694) are the Lancaster-Lebanon League’s three most accurate passers.
Each is in position to set a program record for single-season completion percentage.
Logan Klitsch owns the Weiser record (.676), set in 2021. Kolby Haag (.638) set the Exeter record in 2018. Sean Riley set the Panthers’ standard (.632) in 1998.
(It’s worth noting that completion percentage often goes down later in the season, due to wetter and colder weather and, in the postseason, due to facing against better competition.)
3
Schuylkill Valley leads Berks with a plus-11 turnover differential. The Panthers have a Berks-leading 16 takeaways and have turned it over just five times.
Exeter is next at plus-14 in turnover differential; Wyomissing is plus-13.
Hamburg has turned the ball over a Berks-low three times (in five games). Gov. Mifflin and Exeter are tied with Schuylkill Valley with five turnovers (in six games).
4
A win over Garden Spot Friday will give Conrad Weiser its first 7-0 start since 2011 and just its second in the last quarter-century. The Scouts were 6-0 in the Covid-shortened 2020 regular season before losing their playoff opener.
Exeter and Twin Valley, Berks’ other unbeaten teams, have been here more recently.
The Eagles opened 8-0 last season; the Raiders won their first seven games last year.
5
Hempfield owns just one win over Wilson during Doug Dahms’ first 18 seasons as Bulldogs coach, but it was a big one.
The Black Knights used a long drive and scored with 17 seconds left for a 20-16 win in 2022 that launched them to a Lancaster-Lebanon League Section 1 championship. That snapped a 16-game Wilson winning streak in the series.
Overall, Wilson leads 39-11.
The Black Knights had the best of Gerry Slemmer – for a while, at least – beating him four times in his first five seasons as Wilson coach between 1983-87. He won eight of the last 10 meetings.
