Spartans prepared for Cocalico option attack — but can they stop it?
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A decade before Friday’s Lancaster-Lebanon League Section 4 showdown at Cocalico Bob Wolfrum and his Wyomissing defensive staff were preparing for the Eagles’ difficult-to-defend Flexbone option offense.
The Wyomissing staff began attending offseason clinics at West Point – where Wolfrum’s son Andy was coaching. They huddled with the Cadets’ defensive staff to pick up tips.
“They see their (team’s) option every day (at practice), and they defend option very well,” Bob Wolfrum said.
Option attacks, especially when they’re executed as precisely as Cocalico runs its, are challenging to defend. Wyomissing, Wolfrum said, had trouble against similar offenses years ago so he and his staff went back to school to learn how to better defend it.
“We dove into their option defense,” Wolfrum said of Army.
Few teams stopped Cocalico last season but the Spartans did. They forced turnovers on the first three series at the A-Field, took an early 21-point lead and coasted to 38-7 victory. Cocalico had just 123 total yards.
Wyomissing vs. Cocalico preview capsule
“What they do forces you to make mistakes sometimes,” Cocalico coach Bryan Strohl said of Wyomissing. “Would we have turned the ball over three times playing a team that wasn’t quite as aggressive? Probably not.”
Wolfrum said the key on defense is to be disciplined and to attack, not let the offense dictate the terms.
“What (Army) does, I’m not sure a lot of high school teams are doing to defend it,” Wolfrum said. “So far it’s worked very well for us. Our kids react very well to it.”
If the Spartans (3-0, 6-0) can defend Cocalico as well as they did a year ago they’ll record their Berks-record 42nd straight regular season win and be on the way to a second straight Section 4 title.
Don’t expect it to come quite as easily this season. The Eagles likely won’t put the ball on the ground four times, as they did last year. Plus, this is a far better Cocalico team than the one Wyomissing saw a year ago.
The Eagles fell to 3-4 with that loss but soon hit stride. They were playing a lot of juniors and many came of age in the postseason, when they went on a big run and knocked off top-seeded Exeter in Reiffton in the District 3 Class 5A championship game.
Twenty of those juniors are now seniors, including some good ones: All-State fullback Sam Steffey, all-league wing back Aaryn Longenecker and quarterback Josh Myer.
After an opening-week hiccup against Warwick the Eagles (3-0, 5-1) have won five straight, and in impressive fashion. A month ago they clobbered state-ranked Manheim Central, 48-28. Last week they scored 28 first-quarter points and blitzed Elco 56-7 — the same Elco team Wyomissing couldn’t fully put away a week earlier in a 28-14 victory.
“The way they played (last week), they certainly got everybody’s attention,” Wolfrum said of Cocalico. “They put 48 up on Manheim Central, so everybody was already impressed.
“They’re better (than last season). They’re stronger and quicker and have another year’s experience at doing what they do.”
Strohl admits last year’s playoff run was a bit unexpected, especially after the way his team was handled at Wyomissing. He was equally surprised by the 17-14 season-opening loss to Warwick.
“I thought this year would be our best year to do something like we did last year,” he said. “Week 1 was a train wreck. I didn’t see that performance coming. Warwick played great but we did some really dumb things when it comes to blocking schemes and assignments; it was not what I was expecting from a team heavy with seniors. Since then we’ve been able to get it rolling.”
Cocalico is ranked No. 8 in the state in Class 5A, averaging 40 points per game and boasts the league’s top-ranked run defense – a key factor facing a Wyomissing team that’s averaging a league-high 343 rushing yards per game.
“They do what they do and they do it well,” Strohl said of Wyomissing and it’s Wing-T offense. “You can tell that they’ve been well-coached. Their depth is incredible. They bring in waves of running backs and linemen and linebackers. Every position, it seems they could go two to three deep with kids that could start at a lot of schools.”
Strohl said his team was “laser-focused” last week in holding Elco to 106 total yards and league rushing leader Jake Williams to a season-low 50 yards on 17 carries. The Eagles were the first team to keep him out of the end zone.
As for that lopsided score, and the fact that Elco trailed just 21-14 in the fourth quarter at Wyomissing the week before . . . pay no mind to that, Strohl said.
“The transitive property does not work in football,” he said, dismissing the value of comparison scores. “The fact that we beat Elco more than Wyo did doesn’t mean anything. Hopefully (all) we take away from that is that we can compete in this game.”
