For the Raiders . . . this is it
2025 Berks football coverage presented by
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Most high school football players can only dream about being on the field for a state championship game.
Lucas Myers will be there for the fourth time when Twin Valley meets Southern Lehigh for the PIAA Class 4A championship Thursday at Cumberland Valley’s Chapman Field.
He wasn’t big enough to make any tackles the first three times: He only weighed about 70 pounds, so he stayed safely on the sidelines where he was a ball boy for his dad Brett’s Middletown teams.
He’s sure to be in the thick of it Thursday when the unbeaten Raiders mix it up with the District 11 champion Spartans (14-1). Myers is one of the best linebackers in the Lancaster-Lebanon League; he’s made 129 tackles as a junior and leads his team with a dozen sacks.
He’ll be a vital part to slowing down Southern Lehigh’s All-State running back Sean Steckert and pressuring star quarterback Colton Sams.
Myers’ prior championship-game experience probably won’t play much of a factor in the outcome but it’ll be special for him to get a chance play in the biggest game of the year just like his idols growing up, Middletown linebackers Gage Radabaugh and Hunter Landis.
“It’s pretty cool to think about it, that I’ve been there before,” said Myers, who was a ball boy along with his brother Evan and teammate Drew Engle. “It’s exciting . . . but it’s just another week of football for us, which everybody’s been working so hard for.
“I’ve been playing with these guys all the way through Little League and middle school and we’ve always had a special group. Every year we thought we could make it as far as we wanted, and now we’re able to do it.”
Twin Valley has won a program record 14 games and reached the state playoffs for the first time. It had never won more than 10 games in a season before this.
The Raiders crushed their opposition throughout the regular season, recording the highest average winning margin in Berks history. They had just one competitive game, in Week 7 against unbeaten Wyomissing: They led 7-6 at halftime before pulling away for a 28-6 victory.
“They’re an extremely good football team,” Southern Lehigh coach Phil Sams said of the Raiders.
Head coach Brett Myers knew back in August he had a special group and thought his team could play into December. His players, trained to think ahead no further than the next snap, never took time to look at the big picture.
“As the season moved on we weren’t really worried about it,” two-way lineman Greyson Miller said of making an extended playoff run. “We were just worried about playing each game like it’s our last.
“We try not to look ahead. It’s not something our program likes to do. If we play every game like it’s our last (we know) it’s a very good possibility that we can get there.”
Miller said he didn’t begin to think about playing in a state championship game until after last week’s 28-24 win over Aliquippa was secured.
“That’s when it fell into place, I guess,” he said.
Twin Valley will be just the fifth Berks team to play in a state championship football game. Wyomissing, in 2012, is Berks’ only state champ.
Miller, who cracked the Raiders starting lineup as a freshman, said the driving force around the program has always been to win so that he and his friends could practice together for another week and play one more game.
That motivation isn’t present now: This will be the last football game of the season, win or lose. Miller will go on to play college football, as will other Twin Valley seniors such as Ryan Rementer and Noah DiGiacomo. For some this will be the last time ever suit up.
“It’s surreal to think that there isn’t another game after this,” Miller said. “No matter what happens, it’s done after this. This is it. It’s pretty special that we got to this moment.”
Lucas Myers doesn’t remember all that much about those championship games of 2016, 2017, and 2018. Maybe that’s for the better: He was on the losing sideline for each.
“I was 10 years old (the last time Middletown played for a state title),” he said. “I didn’t appreciate it (at the time) because I was young. It’s crazy to think about that, when I was on the sideline running around watching those guys. Now I’m where they were.”
