Four Downs: Four big takeaways from Week 13 in Berks football

Four takeaways from Week 13 of the 2021 high school football season:

1ST DOWN

It’s safe to say Berks football has never been better.

District 3 has been hosting a playoff tournament for 40 years and this is the first time six Berks teams reached the semifinal round, and the first time four reached championship games.

Wyomissing won the Class 3A title. Wilson played for the 6A title. Exeter and Gov. Mifflin face each other for the 5A title. Berks Catholic, in 4A, and Hamburg, in 3A, reached the semifinals.

Berks has had three teams reach title games in the same season, most recently in 2017 (none of them won) and 2016 (Wilson and Berks Catholic won).

Only once before had as many as five Berks teams reached the semifinals. That came in 2014, when there were only four classifications, so that was even more impressive.

2ND DOWN

The District 3 Class 5A championship trophy will remain in Berks County for another year. That became a done deal Friday when Exeter and Gov. Mifflin won their semifinals.

The Berks vs. Berks title game is not unprecedented. It has happened four prior times, and it involved the same pair of coaches each time: Bob Wolfrum and Rick Keeley.

Wolfrum’s Wyomissing teams beat Keeley’s Holy Name teams in back-to-back Class A championships in 1990 and 1991.

They clashed again in 2014 and 2015, with Wolfrum and Wyomissing winning the first, Keeley and Berks Catholic the second.

3RD DOWN

Wilson coach Doug Dahms nailed it earlier in the week when he said you never sell the Bulldogs short.

They had a rough start, with injuries and a suspension to their lead back, lost back-to-back weeks to Berks teams (that never happens) and were 2-3 at midseason.

They were in jeopardy of missing districts but found a way to pull it all together, win another league title and pull off an eye-opener in the District 3 Class 6A semifinals, knocking out unbeaten Central York. They changed their identity on the fly and ended up playing for a championship.

You won’t get rich betting against the Bulldogs.

4TH DOWN

Wyomissing has had some strong runs before but until Saturday had not won three straight district championship. It’s tough to project what will happen 365 days from now but don’t be surprised if the Spartans win a fourth straight title in 2022.

Their schedule will be stiffer, with a move to Section 4 of the Lancaster-Lebanon League, and they might not breeze to a No. 1 seed as they have twice in the last three seasons.

Still, there were a lot of juniors on the field Saturday for the Class 3A title game against Boiling Springs — lineman Jven Williams, two-way backs Drew Eisenhower and Charlie McIntyre, linebacker Matt Kramer, quarterback Ben Zechman — and the sophomore class looks like another strong one.

That long touchdown run late in the game by soph Ryker Jones came against the Bubblers’ front-line defense, and he and the rest of the second-unit defense stopped the Bubblers’ No. 1 offense a couple times.