The Bellwood-Antis Blue Devils get ripped by Tyrone in the season opener, then start a long win streak by dominating Penns Valley. Is it deja vu?
In the 2005 edition of the Bellwood-Antis football program, is it the beginning of another long run.?
The Blue Devils showed what they can do in week two by blasting Penns Valley 37-0. Admittedly, Penns Valley has absolutely no offense, getting one first down in each of their opening two games and not much defense yielding 74 points.
But a win is somewhere and you have to start somewhere, no matter what the competition.
This week, B-A is on the road again, traveling to Wingate to play Bald Eagle Area.
BEA is coached by Mike Markle in his second season as the head coach of the Bald Eagles.
Bald Eagle Area defeated Penns Valley 37-8 in the season opener for both teams, then lost to Lewistown in a bizarre finish last week. On the final play of the fourth quarter, at Lewistown, Panthers quarterback Chad Snook fired a pass that was intercepted by the Eagles Justin Simpson who outjumped the Lewistown receiver near the goal line Instead of going into overtime, Simpson tried to run the ball back, ended up in the end zone where he was tackled for a safety and a Lewistown win.
Camdin Crouse has completed 10 of 24 passes for 184 and one touchdown. His favorite receiver has been David Immel with four catches for 87 yards.
Bald Eagle Area has pretty much used a run-by-committee with Angel Resto leading the group with 112 yards on 16 carries. Brian Kochik has carried 31 times for 96 yards, Crouse has run 18 times for 71 yards and Gary Sowash has carried the ball eight times for 47 yards.
BEA returns seven starters on offense and nine on defense from a team which finished 3-7 last year.
“Bald Eagle Area is pretty definitive on offense as a Wing-T team, which uses a split end and a wingback on just about every play,” said Bellwood-Antis coach John Hayes. “They run a lot of sweeps, traps and play action passing. They have a number of experienced people who played all last year. Crouse has a good arm, but he is most dangerous when he tucks the ball away and runs. He is a real threat to make something good out of a bad play. That is a concern for our defense.”
The two teams began their series last year when the Big 8, of which BEA was one of seven remaining teams became the Mountain Athletic Football Conference and split into two divisions. Now in the same Nittany, or small school division of the MAFC, Bellwood-Antis and Bald Eagle Area play each other every year.
In 2004, Bellwood-Antis jumped out to a 33-0 lead after the first 16 minutes and then cruised to a 47-15. Josh Kleinfelter rushed for 198 yards and two touchdowns, on just nine carries in his first varsity start and totaled 178 yards alone in the first two quarters.
“The Bald Eagle Area defense has changed this year,” said Hayes. “This is a new wave that is filtering down from a lot of colleges. They use three down linemen, five linebackers and a three-deep secondary. They stunt the daylights out of you-two or three of the backers come on every play and the three-deep secondary plays man-on-man. They attempt to disrupt the play and get the sack quickly before you can get anything done on offense. This system gets more speed on the field and allows a team to take advantage of a situation where they don’t have many down linemen. They should get better with this alignment as they have more success doing it.”
The Blue Devils have rushed for 259 yards, 226 last week and passed for 208 yards.
Josh Kleinfelter has rushed for 204 yards in the Blue Devils first two games, including 152 against Penns valley, the ninth time in his short high school career, the B-A junior has eclipsed the 100-yard mark. Senior quarterback Kyle Drost has completed 15 of 31 passes for 208 yards, with three TD passes and three interceptions. Dan Kovac has five catches for 67 yards and one TD and Devon Clapper has four for 50. Kleinfelter is the leading scorer with three rushing TDs and one receiving score for four TDs for a total of 24 points. Kovac and Clapper have two TDs each and place-kicker Evan Celmo has five PATs and a 32-yard field goal for eight points. With the field goal against Penns Valley last week, Celmo moves into second place at Bellwood-Antis with five career field goals. Dan Graham holds the B-A record with seven field goals.
“We are still doing a lot of the same in practice, still trying to make sure we have the best people starting at the right positions and to build some depth to take care of situations that you know will come,” explained Hayes. “We are still very basic in our practice scheme, it’s too early to expand the playbook much. We need to eliminate mistakes and get better at what we are doing now.”
The Blue Devils will start Drost at quarterback, Jon Davilla at fullback, Kleinfelter at tailback, and Clapper at slotback. Kovac will be the split end, Troy Brunner tight end, Adam Martin and Anthony Jenkins at tackle, Tony DelGrosso and Brian Dougherty at guard and Chad Coho and Josh Peters at center.
On defense Martin and Tyler Narehood will be the tackles, Peters and Brunner the ends, Evan Hughes and Blaze Winterstein at outside linebackers, DelGrosso and Davilla at inside linebackers, Kleinfelter and either Brandon Eger or Danny Campbell at the corners and Brandon Pruznak, Drost and David Burns sharing time at safety.
