Ephrata ends long playoff drought, beats Lower Dauphin in Class 5A
2023 Berks football coverage presented by
Utilities Employees Credit Union
(This story was produced by LNP/Lancasteronline, and published in partnership with MikeDragoSports.com.)
By Jeff Reinhart — LNP/Lancasteronline
EPHRATA — Jeremiah Knowles took one last look over his right shoulder to make sure the scoreboard was right.
It was. And he was finally able to grin from ear to ear, after choking back some tears of joy.
Back in the District 3 playoffs for the first time since 1987 — a 36-year wait, including some pretty bleak times for Ephrata — the Mountaineers on Friday night did something for the very first time in the history of their proud program.
Ephrata won a playoff game, rallying past and then fending off Lower Dauphin 14-13 for a gut-check Class 5A first-round victory before their adoring home-town fans in venerable War Memorial Stadium.
“It means everything to come out here and play for Ephrata,” Knowles said. “This is amazing.”
Ephrata, the No. 5 seed, improved to 10-1 and will play at No. 4 Garden Spot — which shared the Section 3 title with Ephrata and Twin Valley — in the quarterfinals next Friday in New Holland.
The Mounts went from no playoff appearances in 36 years, to advancing to the final eight in the district.
“We don’t have any playoff experience and we don’t know what playoff football is all about,” Ephrata’s Quintin Pfautz said. “But we hung in there and we pulled it off, and that’s all that matters. Every day at practice this week, I’d look around and I was like hey, we’re still playing. We put the work in to get to this moment. And we weren’t going to stop.”
Ephrata coach Kris Miller took over the Mounts program when they were in the midst of an 0-52 stretch. He hung with the kids. Started building from the ground up. Took some lumps. And now this.
“It was some dire straits to get that first win,” Miller said. “And the last few years we were 5-5, 6-4. So we knew this was the year we had to get over that hump. I don’t think I could have even written anything that put us in this situation right now.”
“We’re not the Ephrata of the last generation,” Pfautz said. “We’re the Ephrata of the new generation. And we’re doing all we can to rewrite the story.”
Against 12th-seeded LD, Ephrata grabbed an 8-0 lead, fell behind 13-8, and then sweated out a crazy second half, when three times the Falcons turned the Mounts over on downs.
But LD (6-5) couldn’t muster much offense of its own and was clinging to that five-point lead when Ephrata went on its game-winning march.
The Mounts went 77 yards in seven plays. QB Sam McCracken hit Angel Collazo, Nick Keller and Pfautz with must-have completions, and Brayden Brown, who rushed for 116 yards, darted in from 5 yards out with 3:57 to go.
“We got that last drive we needed to win a football game,” said Miller, who was 2 years old the last time Ephrata was in the playoffs. “We needed that one drive and everything clicked.”
Ephrata misfired on its two-point attempt and then came up with a couple of huge stops on LD’s last-gasp drive. Chase Prange, who scored the Mounts’ first TD on a 6-yard run with 10:01 to go in the first half, sacked Falcons’ QB Carter Burton on fourth-and-long to ice it.
Earlier, LD cut Ephrata’s lead to 8-7 when Burton zipped a 17-yard TD strike to Brandon Fritz with 6:26 to go in the second quarter. LD got the go-ahead score with 20 seconds to go before intermission when Burton called his own number for a 1-yard dive.
LD misfired on a field goal and had a chance to open up some breathing room in the second half, but a TD catch in the corner of the end zone was called incomplete, and Ephrata dodged that bullet.
“We were playing for everybody here,” Pfautz said. “It’s been so long since we’ve had any kind of success like this, so we played for the community, and for them supporting us. We do everything we can do on the field for them.”