NEW BETHLEHEM — You don’t expect to see the mercy rule enacted in many playoff football games. You especially don’t expect it to happen against the home team.
But that’s how thoroughly dominant Coudersport was on Friday night at Redbank Valley, as the Falcons (6-4) absolutely demolished the Bulldogs 52-7 in last night’s District 9 Class A Quarterfinal contest.
Coming just three weeks after losing on the same field 41-27, Coudy coach Tom Storey’s team struck a blow against what Storey has seen as traditional domination by the Southern schools in District 9 over the teams from the North Tier.
“It’s something that’s been built from the AML the last few years when the South kind of always had that stigma,” Storey said after the game. “We saw them three weeks ago, and we’ve been telling (our guys) all week long, ‘You guys come to play, you guys can own them.’ And they stepped up. They did an awesome job.”
The Falcons, who put up 40 points in the first half alone, were powered by a group of killer ‘K’s’ on offense: Stephen Kelly (224 rushing yards, four touchdowns), Hayden Keck (four total touchdowns), and Brandt Kightlinger (52 receiving yards and two touchdowns), all had huge games for Coudersport.
The defense, meanwhile, limited the Bulldogs (7-4) to a paltry 176 yards of offense while picking off quarterback Keaton Kahle three times.
On a Redbank field that resembled a mudpit by the end of the game, Coudy’s powerful running game — which racked up 352 yards in all — set the tempo from its opening drive when Kelly scored the first of his four touchdowns from 51 yards out.
“We just told the kids, ‘That’s Coudy football.’,” Storey said about the muddy conditions. “That’s what we want them to do; we want to be able to run it and of course we threw some great passes. We played both angles for a good solid game.”
Kelly scored again late in the first quarter from 25 yards out to make it 14-0 Coudy.
Redbank would answer quickly, however, as Kahle found Ethan Hetrick for a 26-yard touchdown that saw Hetrick (three catches for 89 yards) make a spectacular diving catch in the end zone.
With the Falcons up 14-7 after one quarter, it looked like the game might turn into a shootout.
That turned out to be true for only one team, as the Falcons would score four touchdowns in a 10-minute span in the second quarter.
The second period began with Keck finding Kightlinger on a short pass which Kightlinger then took 43 yards to the house, giving Coudy a 22-7 advantage.
Kelly would find the end zone two more times in the half on runs of 18 and five yards, while Keck added a two-yard scoring run of his own.
For Kelly, who now has 21 rushing touchdowns on the season, it was the latest in a long line of fantastic performances as the engine that drives the Coudersport offense.
“He’s been a great running back all year long,” Storey said of his senior tailback. “He’s kind of under-talked about in the area. We hurt ourselves a little with a 5-4 record. But he’s a great running back. He’s solid. He can scoot and he can go. It’s his senior year. He’s wanted something and he’s doing it.”
Keck, meanwhile, had one of his best performances of the season for Coudy under center. The sophomore passer threw for 87 yards and two TDs while adding 91 yards on 12 carries and two more scores.
While the Coudy offense doesn’t always ask a lot of the youngster, Storey was impressed by what he saw from the underclassman signal caller.
“He’s a young guy but he’s coming along this year, and that’s a beautiful thing,” Storey said. “We’ve been working on his passing and he’s coming along fine. We’re getting our guys out there. It’s something we’ve been working on the last couple weeks, our passing and sometimes our hands. But he put ‘em out there and the guys were catching them and helping him out. That’s what we’re looking for.”
Keck would find Kightlinger in the end zone again in the third quarter, this time for nine yards. A two-yard scoring run by Keck near the end of the fourth quarter put a bow on things for Coudy.
While much of the attention will be paid to the Falcons’ offense — and with good reason — the performance of the defense shouldn’t go overlooked. After giving up a combined 68 points in its last two games, the Coudy defense completely stifled a Redbank offense that came into Friday averaging over 31 points per game.
The pass rush sacked Kahle three times, and it also forced him into a trio of interceptions; Jacob Pitcher, Travis Gleason, and John Minor came up with the takeaways.
“We had them scrambling, we had them moving,” Storey said of the pressure his defense created.
Perhaps the most impressive aspect of Coudersport’s victory in the grand scheme of things was that it came just two weeks after one of the most crushing losses imaginable.
In a game that decided the Small School North Division title, Coudersport suffered a stunning 21-20 defeat to Smethport in a contest that saw the Hubbers score a flurry of points in the game’s final minutes.
The ability to not only put that loss behind them, but to also use it as motivation, showed the true quality of this Coudy team.
“Yeah, it was horrible,” Storey admitted about losing to Smethport in such heartbreaking fashion. “But we told the guys that basically it was three plays: the two missed coverages and then the fumble, and that gave them 21 points. Other than that, these guys dominated.
“It is hard to lose that (game), but at the same time you can use that as motivation. That’s kind of what we did with them. These last couple weeks, we got them focused and said, ‘If you can do that against those guys (Smethport), you can do it against anybody.’”
The Falcons will hope to do it again next week when they take on Clarion-Limestone, who trounced Otto-Eldred 48-18 on Friday. Coudy lost its regular season matchup against C-L 34-22 on Sept. 14.
“We’ve been telling the guys, we’re going to revenge all those losses from the regular season and win a district title on top of it,” Storey said. “That’s what we’re shooting for.”
AT NEW BETHLEHEM
BY QUARTERS
Coudersport 14 26 6 6—52
Redbank Valley 7 0 0 0—7
TEAM STATISTICS
First Downs: Coudy 12, RV 8; Rushes/Yards Rushing: Coudy: 48-352, RV: 16-2; Yards Passing: Coudy: 87, RV 174; Comp-Att-Int: Coudy: 3-5-0, RV: 12-26-3; Penalties: Coudy: 6-39, RV: 6-69; Fumbles-Lost: Coudy: 0-0, RV: 3-0; Total Yards: Coudy: 439, RV: 176 Offensive Plays: Coudy: 53, RV: 42
INDIVIDUAL STATISTICS
Passing: Coudy: Hayden Keck 3-5-87-2-0; RV: Keaton Kahle 12-26-174-1-3
Rushing: Coudy Stephen Kelly 27-224-4, Kolby VanWhy 8-39, Hayden Keck 12-91-2, Thomas Wilson 1-(-2); RV: Hunter Wiles 7-23, Travis Crawford 2-8, Hunter Buzard 1-1, Keaton Kahle 6-(-30)
Receiving: Coudy: Brandt Kightlinger 2-52-2, John Minor 1-35; RV: Ethan Hetrick 3-89-1, Hunter Wiles 1-2, Hunter Buzard 3-35, Sam Hetrick 2-20, Dalton Bish 3-28
Scoring summary
First quarter
C: Kelly 51-yard run (2-pt conversion by VanWhy), 10:00
C: Kelly 25-yard run (2-pt conversion failed), 3:33
RV: Hetrick 26-yard pass from Kahle (PAT by Kristofer Shaffer), 0:36
Second quarter
C: Kightlinger 43-yard pass from Keck (2-pt conversion by Jacob Pitcher), 11:50
C: Kelly 18-yard run (2-pt conversion failed), 7:15
C: Kelly 5-yard run (2-pt conversion failed), 4:27
C: Keck 2-yard run (PAT no good), 1:43
Third quarter
C: Kightlinger 9-yard pass from Keck (2-pt conversion failed), 3:19
Fourth quarter
C: Keck 2-yard run (PAT no good), 2:15
