Wyo couldn’t get past unbeaten Lampeter-Strasburg but still posted 10-win season
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Bob Wolfrum appeared crestfallen after Wyomissing’s final game, a 30-27 overtime loss to Lampeter-Strasburg in the District 3 Class 4A championship game.
The longtime Spartans coach wasn’t upset about the outcome, tough as it was to swallow.
He just hated to see the season end. Even after 53 years in coaching he still loves every facet of the game: The preparation, the practice, and especially the chess match that unfolds after kickoff.
“You always feel the same (after) the last game, win or lose,” said Wolfrum, Wyomissing’s head coach since 1987. “It’s like you just let all the air out of the tire. It’s over. Realizing that it’s gonna be nine months until we get to do it again.
“Obviously, we weren’t happy that we didn’t win but I’ve been around long enough to handle that. Now we go through the long, hard winter in the weight room. The kids do it, but there’s nothing at the end of the week (to play for). That’s the biggest letdown of them all.”
Wolfrum certainly wasn’t let down by the effort he saw in the Spartans’ final game. A month after seeing their 36-game home winning streak snapped by a 20-7 loss to Lampeter-Strasburg — a game in which Wyomissing struggled for every inch it gained – the Spartans looked like a different team.
Wolfrum and his staff made some subtle changes in their run game – giving different looks in formations and motions and altering their blocking on certain plays – and it worked like a charm.
The Spartans nearly tripled their rushing output from the first game and took a 27-20 lead on Tyler Niedrowski’s 80-yard run with 3:15 left. After the Pioneers tied it with 28 seconds left, Wyomissing took the lead in overtime with a field goal.
A penalty on the play gave Wyomissing a fresh set of downs at the 5 and an opportunity for a touchdown – critical in overtime games. Wolfrum took that chance but it didn’t pay off. The Spartans were stopped at the 2, ended up trying another field goal, then saw it blocked.
Spartans’ Justice Hardy hurdles a Haverford School defender. (Tim Macrina photo)
Lampeter-Strasburg advanced to the PIAA semifinals when Peter Fiorello booted a short field goal moments later, ending Wyomissing’s season.
“You can’t second-guess that (decision),” Wolfrum said of taking points off the board. “When you’re on the 5 you oughta be able to score.”
Seeing the kick blocked was Wolfrum’s biggest regret. Wyomissing, always strong in the kicking game, hadn’t had a kick blocked all season. It had two blocked by Lampeter, including an extra point early in the fourth quarter.
“That just shouldn’t happen,” Wolfrum said. “That’s not a hard thing to do, to block for an extra point. That part was disappointing.”
Otherwise there weren’t many disappointing moments in a 10-3 season – Wyomissing’s fourth straight with 10 or more wins.
True, the Spartans saw their Berks-record streak of five straight district championships end, and they were beaten at home for the first time in six years. Other than that it was another outstanding season.
Their only losses came to Lampeter-Strasburg – unbeaten and ranked No. 3 in the state – and to The Haverford School, a private boarding school that heavily recruits the Philadelphia area and plays in the Inter-Ac League.
They opened the season with a 35-21 win over defending PIAA Class 2A champ Southern Columbia and scored an impressive 34-24 Week 8 win at Twin Valley, setting up a Week 10 showdown with Lampeter for the Lancaster-Lebanon League Section 4 championship.
“I thought we had a great year,” Wolfrum said, “to get that far. (At the beginning of the season) we didn’t know what we had in a lot of the skill positions.
“We had a senior (offensive) line coming back, so we felt pretty good about that, (but) we were young at a lot of positions and didn’t have much depth that we knew about. We had young quarterbacks, which we didn’t know about. We just really played well and got better as the year went on.”
The passing game never developed but the run game was again strong – Justice Hardy and Danny Fleischood each averaged over 9 yards per carry; Chase Eisenhower and Derek Macrina each averaged 7 yards a pop.
Wyomissing coach Bob Wolfrum. (Tim Macrina photo)
The defense was very good: It recorded three shutouts and held five teams to a touchdown or less, including its first two playoff opponents, East Pennsboro and West York.
The Spartans finished the regular season ranked No. 5 in the 37-team league in total defense and No. 4 against the rush.
Defensive lineman Max Tipton and Eisenhower and Niedrowski, both linebackers, were named first-team all-league and sophomore Justice Hardy was a unanimous choice as Section 4’s Defensive Back of the Year, as well as a first-team pick as a kick returner.
Hardy missed a couple playoff games and chunks of both Lampeter games due to injuries but when he was on the field he was one of the league’s best all-around players, capable of changing the game in all three phases: He scored on rushes, receptions, a kickoff return, and an interception return.
He averaged 9.3 yards per carry and had monster game against Twin Valley, with 196 rushing yards and two catches for 101 yards.
Hardy had just 84 carries for the season, in part because he spent a lot of time lined up as a wide receiver; he ended up leading the team with nine receptions.
The 10-3 finish gives Wyomissing a 50-7 record over the last four seasons and a 71-9 record over the last six – that’s an .887 winning percentage.
It pushed Wolfrum’s career record to 372-92-1; only Southern Columbia’s Jim Roth has won more games among active Pennsylvania coaches.
There are more wins on the way. Most of Wyomissing’s top players, especially at the skill positions, are underclassmen: Hardy, Eisenhower, Niedrowski, Fleischood, and second-team all-league tight end Andrew Bresnahan.
Eisenhower was a two-way all-league pick and has a shot at Wyomissing’s career rushing record: He’s 851 yards away from Gregory Lord’s record of 3,116.
Wolfrum could care less about stats and program records; he just wants to get back in the lab and work on developing next year’s team.
Lampeter-Strasburg became the first opponent to beat one of his teams twice in the same season since Conrad Weiser did it in 1996 (the Spartans lost in overtime in that rematch, too).
“That was just a fun game to be a part of,” he said of the season-ender. “I felt a whole lot better about the effort, and how well we played (that I did after the first game). I was disappointed that we didn’t win it (but) sometimes (what’s most important) is the effort and how (well) you play.”
Spartans fullback Chase Eisenhower works past a Haverford School defender. (Tim Macrina photo)