Laurel Highlands ends season with win over Uniontown
Laurel Highlands survived an early knockdown punch from Uniontown and wound up winning a unanimous decision in their Keystone Conference high school football clash on Friday night. Alex Bota and Tommy Newman both rushed for over 100 yards as the Mustangs climbed out of an early 14-0 deficit to pull away for a 33-20 victory over the visiting Red Raiders.
“It’s a great way to end the season,” said LH coach Scott Knee, whose team just missed qualifying for the WPIAL playoffs and will not play a 10th game next week.
Laurel Highlands finishes the season with a 3-6 overall mark and a 3-4 conference record to put them in a tie with Derry for fifth place, one game out of a playoff spot. Uniontown falls to 2-7 and 1-6.
“I told our players all week that they’ll always remember the last one,” Knee said of the season finale. “You want it to propel you into the offseason.”
“This is the perfect ending,” said Newman, a senior fullback who rushed for 112 yards and four touchdowns on 17 carries.
It was the perfect beginning for Uniontown, however, when dangerous wide receiver Quindell Dean rang up 100 total yards and a pair of touchdowns the first two times he touched the ball.
Jeff Correal got the Red Raiders off the a good start with a 26-yard kickoff return to the 50-yard line, and Dean broke free on a reverse on the first play from scrimmage to give Uniontown a quick 7-0 lead after Ryan Robowski’s extra-point kick.
Laurel Highlands’ first possession ended on downs at the Uniontown 28. Four plays later Red Raider quarterback Steve Kezmarsky lofted a perfect pass deep down the middle to Dean, who took the ball in stride while beating double coverage for a 50-yard scoring strike and a stunning 14-0 lead.
“We saw on film that the reverse might work, so we went with that on the first play,” Uniontown coach John Fortugna said. “Quindell is such a good athlete, he made that happen. Then Kezmarsky threw a nice pass, put it right in Quindell’s hands. We had them on the ropes with a 14-0 lead, they did a good job of coming back. It was a real good game. Our kids played hard.”
Knee thought the Senior Night festivities hindered his team a bit.
“We had a tough time warming up, and they came out ready to go,” Knee said. “They caught us flat-footed. We were stunned a little bit.”
Down 14-0, Knee decided to gamble on a fourth-and-one play from the LH 41 on the Mustangs’ next possession. The move paid off big time when Newman broke through the line and not only picked up the first down, but rambled 59 yards for a touchdown. Victor Fiano’s extra-point kick made it 14-7.
The explosive first quarter wasn’t over yet, though.
The Red Raiders responded with a seven-play, 77-yard drive sparked by Kezmarsky passes of 11 yards to Dean and 17 yards to Kevin Sanders, and capped by Nick Neratka’s 28-yard TD run up the middle. The extra-point kick failed due to a bad snap, but Uniontown was up by two scores again, 20-7.
Dean intercepted a Jared Jodon pass at the Uniontown two-yard line to foil LH’s first drive of the second quarter, but when the Mustangs forced a three-and-out, Bota broke off a 31-yard run to the Uniontown one-yard line and Newman scored from there. Fiano’s kick made it 20-14.
Bota wound up as the game’s leading rusher with 170 yards on 21 carries.
An interception by Ryan Crawford and sacks of Jodon by Aaron Oliver and Darren Ketter foiled the Mustangs’ final two drives of the half.
Laurel Highlands then took control of the game with an impressive 16-play, 65-yard march to start the third quarter. Newman finished off the drive with a one-yard TD run and Fiano’s extra-point kick gave LH its first lead of the game 21-20.
The Mustangs would never look back.
Laurel Highlands used a grind-it-out offense and an opportunistic defense to dominant the final two quarters. All four of Uniontown’s possessions in the second half ended with interceptions. James Wilhelm, Rich Kolesar and Gregg Forse picked off Kezmarsky passes, while Eric Yauger intercepted a Michael Dvorchak throw.
“They changed a few things in their secondary and blitzed a little bit more in the second half,” Fortugna said. “The interceptions hurt us.”
The Mustangs surged to a 27-20 lead when Newman scored on a one-yard run on the first play of the fourth quarter, and Bota put the game away with a 37-yard TD run with 1:45 remaining.
“The kids did a great job in the second half of executing our game plan,” Knee said. “Chris Edenfield, our defensive coordinator, did a great job of adjusting our defense. We started going to a zone a bit and doubled up on Dean to try to take that aspect away from them. We made some great adjustments and the players executed.”
The elusive Dean still wound up with six receptions for 98 yards and returned four kickoffs for 85 yards.
The Mustangs rolled up 324 yards on the ground and held an almost 10-minute edge in time of possession.