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SOUTH CENTRE TWP.-In a season that’s had its share of peaks and valleys, Montoursville is back in familiar territory. Thanks to a couple of fortuitous bounces in a key third-quarter sequence, the Warriors were able to get past Milton with a 17-14 victory on Friday night at Central Columbia. The semifinal win earned Montoursville a trip to Danville for a rematch of last year’s Class 3A championship game. It will also mark the fourth consecutive appearance in a district final.
With the score tied 7-7, Montoursville took the second-half kickoff and regained the lead on a 31-yard field goal by Wyatt Fry that bounced off the crossbar and went through. On the ensuing kickoff, Fry tried a squib kick that ended up going off the leg of a Milton player, and was recovered by Montoursville. The Milton defense put up a good fight, but on 4th-and-1, Kayden Frame took a toss to his left and scampered 8 yards for a critical touchdown that gave the Warriors a two-score lead with 2:51 left in the third quarter.
“We’ve had trouble kicking this year,” Montoursville coach Mike Boughton said. “We haven’t been real consistent, and we were going to squib it down the hash. It just happened to hit the kid, and – perfect. That’s a big momentum changer there. Even though we didn’t mean it, that’s a big momentum changer.”
Montoursville (7-5) was able to strike first on its second possession of the night. Following two consecutive false start penalties, quarterback Maddix Dalena delivered a strike down the middle to James Batkowski. The junior caught the pass in stride, and outran the secondary for a 57-yard touchdown pass to open the scoring.
“That was big, and we saw that they weren’t really shifting over when we’d go in motion,” Boughton said. “We thought we could hit Batkowski down the center of the field, and Maddix made a good read. We had trouble with our pass blocking at times throughout the night, or maybe we could have hit a few more downfield.”
Just when it looked like Montoursville was about to strike again, Dylan Reiff had other ideas. Reiff made a nifty interception deep in Milton territory by getting one foot down on a very athletic play. Following the turnover, Milton would put together an impressive 16-play, 86-yard drive that lasted over nine minutes. Quarterback Xzaiver Minium made the first of his two big plays by getting inside the front-right pylon on a 7-yard touchdown run. Thanks to the long drive, Milton dominated the time of possession in the first half, and ran 30 offensive plays, while Montoursville ran only 11.
“(At halftime) I was thinking that we were having some success, we gave up one big play, we were able to drive in the second quarter, and you have to play four quarters to win the football game,” Milton coach Phil Davis said. “The message I told our team at halftime was, it’s really 0-0. You have to win the third and fourth quarter, and we get to move on.”
Milton (7-5) saw Montoursville turn the tables in terms of ball control. The first two drives of the second half saw the Warriors run 17 consecutive plays before the Milton offense got on the field. It wasn’t until the 2:46 mark of the third quarter that the Black Panthers were able to run a play.
“A lot of people will come back and say, ‘boy, that was what really changed the game,’ but I don’t think it did. The extra possession hurt us. We hadn’t really had the ball at all in the third quarter at that point. It took a little bit of air out of us, but I thought we responded, came back and made it close again,” Davis said.
The Black Panthers were able to make things interesting down the stretch, courtesy of an outstanding play by Minium. With the passing game struggling, Minium took off on a designed run. When he found daylight off the left side, he was gone down the sidelines for a 77-yard touchdown with 3:54 left to play. Minium finished the game with 127 yards on 16 carries to lead all rushers.
“I think we played well defensively,” Boughton said. “We knew they were going to come out and primarily run the ball. They don’t have a big passing game, but their quarterback is shifty. Obviously, we saw that with the big run he had towards the end of the game. We just had to contain him. We did a pretty good job the whole game. We gave up some big plays here and there, but that’s going to happen.”
Trailing by three with just four minutes left and one timeout remaining, Davis decided against the onsides kick. Instead, he opted for a pooch kick that was recovered by Montoursville at the Warriors’ 19. Frame and his offensive line made sure Milton would never get the ball back. Frame carried the ball on five straight plays that netted 22 yards and two first downs.
“No, not with three-plus minutes left,” Davis said when asked about a potential onsides kick. “Honestly, I thought we would have a chance of recovering the pooch kick,” Davis said. “Our defense played great all night. Give Montoursville credit, they were able to grind out some first downs when they needed it the most. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to get stops.”