It’s a ‘character win’ for Hawks as they come back to beat Tri-Valley

By Robert Morris — MikeDragoSports.com special correspondent

Trailing by 11 points at intermission, Hamburg coach Jeff Chillot and his staff made only one adjustment in the halftime locker room.

Get the ball more to Diohnny Ruiz.

The Hamburg senior playmaker didn’t disappoint, rushing for 147 of his 169 yards in the second half and scoring three touchdowns as the Hawks surged past previously unbeaten Tri-Valley 36-18 in a non-league game atop Hawk Hill.

Ruiz scored on runs of 16, 19 and 82 yards as Hamburg scored the game’s final 29 points after trailing 18-7 at halftime.

“I was starting to get mad because I wasn’t getting enough touches,” said Ruiz, who had just five carries in the opening 24 minutes. “I told (assistant coach Damian) Buggy and he trusted me. He started to get me the ball more and I showed them what I got.

“After we got that first touchdown and made that stop, I knew we were going to come back. Our defense played crazy in the second half.”

Tri-Valley (3-1), which was missing starting tailback Kam Wetzel, built its lead on the strength of a 2-yard touchdown run by Jacob Scheib, a 5-yard TD pass from Jonas McGrath to Jolten Flory and an 83-yard interception return by Reese Huntzinger.

Huntzinger’s Pick-6 came with 24 seconds left in the second quarter after Hamburg had driven to the Tri-Valley 26. Chillot said the Hawks’ ability to move the ball in the first half gave them hope they could get back in the game in the second half.

“We were going in to take the lead at the end of the first half and they flipped a play on us,” Chillot said. “We just told them we had to handle adversity. It was one play. We had to come out in the second half and get the first stop. We didn’t feel they were stopping us on offense, we were stopping ourselves.”

Hamburg forced a three-and-out to open the second half then went to work. It wasted no time getting the ball to Ruiz, as quarterback Xander Menapace hit the 5-foot-11, 185-pounder on a 20-yard swing pass.

Menapace called his own number on the next play, going 44 yards for a touchdown. Ronny Parra’s two-point conversion run after a Tri-Valley penalty made it 18-15.

After another defensive stop Hamburg put together a 16-play, 84-yard drive to take the lead. Menapace was 5-for-5 for 58 yards on the drive, with Ruiz covering the final 16 on a sweep. Nicholas Hix’s kick made it 22-18.

The Hawks took control of the game over the next 26 seconds.

On their first play of the next possession, the Dawgs fumbled, with Hamburg’s Alex Bentz recovering. On the next play, Ruiz scampered through the middle for 19 yards and a touchdown.

Just like that Hamburg led 29-18.

“We didn’t come out to play in the second half,” Tri-Valley coach Jeff Sampson said. “We had missed tackles, missed balls, fumbles. You can’t come out in the second half and do those things and win a football game.

“You make mistakes like that in a tight game like this, you can’t afford it. It’s something that you can’t let happen. Tonight we let it happen.”

Tri-Valley put together one final drive, reaching the Hamburg 5 before Ruiz tackled Scheib for a 7-yard loss on a pitch right. After three straight incompletions ended the drive, Ruiz raced 82 yards for a touchdown to put the icing on the Hawks’ fourth win of the season.

The victory comes six days after Hamburg was manhandled in a 47-7 loss to Wyomissing that left the Hawks battered and bruised for most of the week.

“This is a character win,” Chillot said. “You’re down 11 at half, you come out and flip the score. You beat a really good team that’s used to winning. This is one of those games when you look back at the end of the season that this is the game that turned it for us.

“This is a huge win for us.”