Aug 26, 2023 By The Herald-Standard 4 min read

George Messich wasn’t happy about his team’s performance in the first half of Friday night’s season opener at Avella.

He let his team know that as Mapletown faced a 6-0 deficit at halftime.

His players took notice, scored on the opening play of the second half and the Maples went to notch a 29-12 non-conference victory.

“Realistically, we should’ve had at least two touchdowns in the first half,” Messich said. “We weren’t playing a 110 percent on every play. We had a major discussion about that at halftime. Obviously it changed some things because we gave a lot better effort in the second half.”

Mapletown forced an Eagles fumble on the second half kickoff that Evan Griffin returned 23 yards for a touchdown to the game at 6-6.

The Maples took control from there as A.J. Vanata scored on touchdown runs of 14 yards midway through the third quarter and 18 yards early in the fourth quarter before throwing a 26-yard TD pass to Roger Gradek with 2.29 remaining to put the game away.

Cole Jaworowski, who scored on a 1-yard run in the second quarter to give Avella the lead, tacked on a second touchdown run of 7 yard with 15 seconds left to cap the scoring.

“It was just a different football team,” Messich said of the second half. “We looked like the Mapletown football team practicing Tuesday and Wednesday. I was very pleased with the way we played. We moved the ball on the ground. We can throw a little bit, we didn’t do bad there. We threw for a touchdown.”

Vanata led the way with 20 carries for 129 yards while completing 6 of 8 passes for 42 yards although he did throw an interception.

Still, the senior didn’t give himself a good self-assessment of his game.

“Not very good,” Vanata said. “I had a couple fumbles. Room to improve.”

Vanata also was displeased at how his team began the game.

“We were a little disappointed with the first half, I’m not going to lie,” Vanata said. “But we picked it up in the second half and got the ‘W.’ You can’t complain about a win but we’ll have to step it up next game.

“We’ve got to be hungry. We can’t come out like we did today.”

Mapletown outgained Avella 268 yards to 184 although both teams had 10 first downs.

Chas Rush led the Eagles’ ground attack with nine carries for 53 yards. Jaworowski completed 5 of 14 passes for 89 yards with four going to Caleb Ruschel for 52 yards.

Gradek had three receptions for 28 yards. Vanata and Griffin led the Maples’ defense with five tackles apiece. Brock Evans blocked Avella’s first extra-point attempt.

Mapletown was two for three in 2-point conversions with Vanata passing to Joshua Howard for one and Gradek running in the other. Jeremiah Mick was successful on his lone extra-point kick.

Messich commended his team for being able to turn its fortunes around at halftime.

“A lot of teams that come out and don’t have a great first half, they don’t have a great second half either, so I give our kids a lot of credit there,” Messich said. “I’m really proud of them.”

While he stressed he’d like to see a more consistent showing in the future, Messich did note the bottom line is getting the victory.

“It doesn’t matter how it happens, when you come out of a game with a win it does a lot for you,” said Messich, who recalled what Pitt coach Johnny Majors told the Panthers during their undefeated national championship season in 1976 after an unexpectedly hard-fought 23-13 win over Syracuse which went on to finish 3-8.

“I told my team, Coach Majors when I was at Pitt and Syracuse really battled us, I’ll never forget, the first thing he said to us after that game is look at the scoreboard. If you win by one point or 25 it doesn’t matter, you won the football game. That’s how I’m taking this game. We’re 1-0.”

Mapletown extended its regular-season winning streak to 11 and travels to Frazier next week before returning home to play the Eagles again on Sept. 8.

“We’ll break down Frazier and see what they do,” Messich said. “I know they throw the ball nice.

“We’re going to have some good hard practices this week to get ready for them.”

(Westley Burchianti contributed to this story.)