Solanco claims Section 3 championship with victory over Garden Spot
2025 Berks football coverage presented by
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(This story was produced by LNP/Lancasteronline, and published in partnership with MikeDragoSports.com.)
By Jeff Reinhart — LNP/Lancasteronline
NEW HOLLAND — Mission accomplished.
Solanco’s football team has been lugging around a bull’s-eyes since August. The Golden Mules were the team to beat in Lancaster-Lebanon League Section 3 from the jump, and pretty much everyone knew it.
| Final | |
| Solanco | 28 |
| Garden Spot | 21 |
After a gut-punch Week 1 non-league loss in overtime at Lampeter-Strasburg, Solanco coach Tony Cox immediately got his team’s attention in the postgame huddle. “Flush it” was his message. There will be bigger fish to fry later on.
Later on was Friday night and the Golden Mules did indeed land the biggest fish in the Section 3 pond.
Johnny Garcia had two touchdown runs, Chase Sensenig and Eric Koch connected on two long TD passes, and Solanco fended off pesky Garden Spot 28-21 to capture the outright section championship at New Holland with their ninth win a row.
“We got some adversity right away with the L-S game,” Cox said. “But everybody buckled up, and the seniors became our leaders.”
“Biggest thing was the dedication after that L-S loss,” Solanco senior secondary standout Gabe Forren said. “I’m so proud of everybody. We worked so hard in the offseason and this whole season for these wins. After the L-S game I told the guys, ‘Hey, this wasn’t a section game.’ And we came out and started hitting harder right away. To get this win here . . .. so, so happy.”
Solanco’s seniors will go out with bookend outright crowns; the Mules went 10-0 when they were freshmen in 2022.
“Storybook,” said Garcia, one of those seniors. “It’s a real honor. The last two seasons haven’t been the greatest. So to come out in our senior year and the win the section, this means the world to us.”
And to everyone in Solanco Nation.
“It’s a big deal,” Cox said about winning a section crown. “And it’s good for the program. Having the program have some success like this, and seeing the kids come together as a family . . . that leads to some really good camaraderie with the team.”
Garden Spot drew first blood Friday when Gabe Martin had a 1-yard keeper on the second play of the second quarter to put the Spartans up 7-0.
That only seemed to fire up Solanco, which scored three unanswered touchdowns to close the half.
Garcia’s 5-yard plunge made it 7-7. Sensenig’s 26-yard TD flip to Koch gave the Mules a 14-7 lead. And Solanco (6-0, 9-1) executed a perfect two-minute drill to grab a 21-7 lead at the half on Garcia’s 3-yard body slam with eight ticks left in the second quarter.
Undaunted, Garden Spot (3-3, 5-5) kept slugging in the second half and sliced Solanco’s lead down to 21-14 on Martin’s second TD keeper, an 8-yarder, with 9:26 to play in regulation.
The Mules punched right back when Sensenig hit Koch, who was wide open deep downfield, for a 54-yard TD strike, to give them a seemingly safe 28-14 cushion with 5:24 to play.
But Garden Spot made one last gasp, getting a 4-yard TD pass from Martin to Gavin Compton with 1:12 left. The Spartans’ ensuing on-side kick did not travel the prerequisite 10 yards, Solanco got it back and took two knees in section-championship-clinching formation.
“Extremely proud,” Garcia said. “We could have gone down or we could have gone up after the L-S game. We kept pushing through that adversity. We made the best out of it. We knew after that loss that we didn’t want to lose again.”
They haven’t. Up next, the District 3 Class 5A playoffs, where the Mules — pending the rest of the Week 10 results — have a legit shot to earn a top-4 seed and get a first-round bye and a home game in the quarterfinals.
“We took it one week at a time,” Forren said. “It didn’t matter who we were playing. We were going to come out every week and play hard. So to do this is just really amazing.”
