Mikes’ Christopher closes career with monster game
Jonathan Christopher did all he could to try and lift Carmmichaels past Springdale in their WPIAL Class 1-A football playoyff game on Friday night.
In the end, the senior quarterback just ran out of time as the Dynamos had the ball last, basically, scoring with four seconds left to pull out a 50-44 win.
Christopher was the leading scorer in the area during the first week of the postseason with a monster game that included five touchdown runs, three two-point conversion runs and one two-point conversion pass.
Christopher accounted for all by eight of his team’s 44 points and his 36-point performance jumped from him from 14th to third in the Herald-Standard Touchdown Club standings.
Mapletown’s Dylan Rush, despite being shut out in the Maples’ playoff loss at Northgate, has first place all but secured with a final total of 144. Only one team remains alive heading into the second week of the playoffs, that being Ringgold, whose leading scorer is Max Maciejewski with 74 points.
How impressive was Christopher on Friday night? Good enough to have Springdale coach Dave Leasure tell his quarterback to kneel on the Mikes’ one-yard line to let most of the final minute run off the clock before trying to score the go-ahead TD (the Dynamos trailed, 44-43, at the time) so as not to give the Mikes and their outstanding QB the ball back with too much time remaining.
Christopher had scored the tying touchdown and run in the two-point conversion with 5:32 remaining.
His stellar outing wasn’t a surprise to Carmichaels coach Ryan Krull.
“He could’ve done that all year,” Krull said. “I told him going into that playoff game, ‘It’s do-or-die now.’ Not that we were going to throw him to the wolves and let him get beat up. We were going to let him run and really take the leash off of him and just let the cards fall where they may.”
Krull saw Christopher’s running potential in the Mikes’ first two games of the season.
“If you look back at the Monessen game and the OLSH game, he ran a lot,” Krull said. “I think he had 15-18 carries in the OLSH game (for 104 yards) and he ran really well against a good defense. From that point, his carries went down rather than went up because we wanted to make sure that we were being smart with him, and smart with keeping everybody involved as well because that’s how we operate offensively where it’s not just a one-man show, it’s multiple guys touching the ball.”
Christopher, despite his early-season success on the ground, had no problem giving up carries.
“Totally unselfish on his part because a lot of kids after those first two weeks, seeing that they are really great players with the ball in their hands, would say, ‘Coach, give me more carries, give me more carries,'” Krull said. “That was never the case.”
In fact, Krull wishes Christopher would sometimes be a little more vocal.
“He’s one of those quiet kind of leaders. He doesn’t say a whole lot. He’ll come in my office and we’ll watch film together and sometimes I’ll tell him, ‘You make things awkward, man, you sit there and you don’t say anything. At least give me an ‘OK’ or ‘yeah’ or something,'” Krull said with a laugh.
“But kids want to be like Johnny just because of the way he works and the product he puts on the field. He’s great player and a great kid.”
California’s Jonathan Wood ran in a two-point conversion in the Trojans’ loss at Bishop Canevin to end his year at 94 points which likely will hold up for second place in the standings.
Yough’s Dustin Shoaf is fourth with 86 points while Mount Pleasant’s Keith Kalp had a TD in the Vikings’ loss to Bearver Falls to pull into a tie for fifth place with Belle Vernon’s Nick Hall at 84 points. The Leopards were shut out at West Miffliin.
Rounding out the top 10 are West Greene’s Benjamin Watson (80), Maciejewski, Southmoreland’s Ronnie Robinson (72) and Belle Vernon’s Mike Fine and Ringgold’s Brenden Small (68 each).
The Rams play New Castle at Mars High School in the Class 4-A semifinals on Friday night at 7:30.