Crouse sparkles in Waynesburg’s win over West Greene
WAYNESBURG – Just call Teagan Crouse the eraser.
Waynesburg Central didn’t play a clean, perfect game in its football opener against visiting West Greene on Friday night but Crouse made sure that few of the miscues were costly with a sparkling performance in the Raiders’ 50-6 victory.
Crouse completed 9 of 10 passes for 236 yards and two touchdowns and ran for three scores to help Joe Kuhns make a triumphant return to coaching after a year off.
“We came out a little jittery,” Kuhns said. “That’s to be expected in the first game. There were some execution issues.
“We’ve just got a couple guys that can make up for mistakes every once in a while. Teagan is one of them. If we don’t do the right action or block the right guy, he’s got the ability to make people miss and make plays.”
Crouse’s favorite target was receiver Jack Ricciuti who hauled in four passes for 159 yards, including a 91-yard touchdown. Zachery Jiblits had two receptions for 49 yards, Jeffery Blair caught a pair of passes for 25 yards and Ross Tennant had a 3-yard touchdown reception to go with an 8-yard scoring run.
“Jack is a matchup nightmare,” Kuhns said. “He’s going to get doubled a lot this season mostly because of what he did tonight, but we’ve got other guys in Jiblits and a kid that’s hurt right now, Ace Litwinovich, who’ll be coming back in a couple weeks. We have weapons. But up front we’ve got a lot of work to do yet on both sides of the ball.”
The Pioneers converted a short fourth-down play with a plunge by freshman quarterback Joel Rizor on their opening drive and attempted another fourth-down play soon after but a high snap gave the Raiders the ball at West Greene 17.
That led to Crouse’s first TD run on a 13-yard scramble. Nate Ricciuti booted the first of his six extra-point attempts and Waynesburg was ahead to stay, 7-0.
The Pioneers moved the sticks once on their next drive but were foiled on another fourth-down play when Jack Ricciuti tackled Rizor for a 1-yard loss at the West Greene 39. Crouse scored on a 1-yard run four plays later to make it 14-0 after one quarter.
After a three-and-out by the Pioneers, Crouse capped a four-play drive, highlighted by a 49-yard completion to Jiblits, with a 9-yard run with 9:01 left in the second quarter.
Rizor completed an 8-yard pass to Kyle Cunningham on a third-and-6 play on West Greene’s next drive but Waynesburg’s defense broke up a fourth-day pass and Crouse went to work again from the Pioneers 39.
Crouse completed passes of 30 and 14 yards to Ricciuti, who made a leaping grab along the right sideline on the former, in a four-play march the he finished with a 3-yard TD pass to Tennant to make it 28-0.
Crouse and Ricciuti weren’t done yet in the first half. Taking over at their own 20 after a West Greene punt, the Raiders struck again when Crouse lofted a long throw down the left side that Ricciuti caught in stride for a 91-yard touchdown and a 35-0 halftime lead.
Pioneers third-year coach Beau Jackson knew his Class A squad faced a stiff challenge in the Raiders, who were a playoff team in Class 2A last year.
“They’ve got good athletes over there,” Jackson said. “We had trouble getting off the field on defense. On the offensive end we couldn’t get third-down conversions. I think a lot of it on both sides of the ball was just they’re a lot faster than we are. We knew with Crouse at quarterback and Ricciuti at receiver along with Jiblits that they could cause some problems for our defense.
“I think anybody in the stands probably saw our game plan was keep it on the ground, keep the clock rolling. We thought if we had a chance it was going to be between the tackles. We converted a couple early. We had a bad shotgun snap and even had a few under center that were bobbled and we’ve got to fix that.”
Kuhns wasn’t completely satisfied at halftime despite his team’s large lead.
“I told them in the locker room we want to be process driven not results driven and we didn’t run the ball very well,” Kuhns said. “We’re going to focus on that this week and see if we can get better at that aspect of the game.”
Waynesburg opened the second half with a five-play, 64-yard drive that featured a 24-yard pass by Crouse to Ricciuti, a 22-yard run by Roan Tustin and an 18-yard pass by Crouse to Blair, and was capped by Tennant’s 6-yard touchdown run.
West Green responded with its best drive of the night, an 11-play, 56-yard march, highlighted by Rizor’s 11-yard completion to Matthew Wassil on a fourth-and-7 play. Jacob Orndoff capped the drive with an 8-yard touchdown run with eight seconds left in the third quarter.
“It was encouraging to see us continue to play hard, put together a nice drive and get a touchdown there from Jacob,” Jackson said.
The Raiders’ final drive lasted 11 plays, again covered 64 yards, and was finished off with a 1-yard TD burst by Jackson Brunell.
Crouse was the Raiders’ leading rusher with six carries for 70 yards.
Rizor paced West Greene with 16 carries for 29 yards and Cunningham, also a freshman, had 10 attempts for 26 yards.
Jackson cautioned his players to not get discouraged by the loss.
“I told them it’s just one game so let’s not put our heads down about it,” he said. “We don’t like the way we performed and executed but again that’s a good team over there we played. I told our seniors that our coaching staff is going to give us everything that we have and I hope that they respond to that as well.”
Kuhns, whose first head coaching job was at Waynesburg from 2009 to 2011 followed by stints at California and his alma mater Beth-Center before joining the PennWest California coaching staff, last coached in high school with the Bulldogs in 2021.
“I think I’m a little more calm now than when I was doing it before,” Kuhns said. “I just want to have fun, don’t stress about it. If these kids can perform like this then I won’t be stressed much I guess,” Kuhns added with a laugh.
Kuhns’ son Colby is a member of the Raiders’ staff.
“My son’s coaching with me now and he got to call the JV offense (in the fourth quarter),” Kuhn said. “He told me hey, that’s cool, and I told him now you know why I love it so much.”
As for what he told his team after the victory, Kuhns said, “That’s the first one. The fuse is lit for the 2025 season. Let’s keep it burning.”