Mt. Lebanon looking for a big finish in football
After storming back and beating Peters Township, 42-28, Mt. Lebanon (4-1, 5-3) finds itself in perfect position to prepare for its final assault on the Southeastern Conference championship.
In fact, the Blue Devils have two weeks to prepare for their pivotal battle. They host Penn Hills (2-3, 4-4) in a crossover contest at 7:30 p.m. Oct. 21 before visiting league-leading Bethel Park (4-0, 4-3) in the conference showdown at 7:30 p.m. Oct. 28.
“No doubt, we want to continue to get better every single week,” said Lebo skipper Mike Melnyk. “So we will continue to practice hard. It will be an exciting game here. (Penn Hills) certainly is a talented team.”
The Indians boast the top passer in the WPIAL in Cam Tarrant. He has passed for more than 2,000 yards and 26 scores this season. Julian Major is the top target, averaging more than 15 yards a catch.
“We are playing for seedings and some things down the road, so we just want to continue to worry about ourselves and get better. We’ll play that game (against Penn Hills) on Friday and try to win it.
“No question,” Melnyk continued, “that last game at Bethel is going to be for the championship. So we are right where we want to be in the conference.”
In the second half of the contest against Peters Township, the Blue Devils certainly played like champions. They overcame a 21-7 deficit and decimated the Indians’ defenses for 28 second-half points.
The contest turned on Edgar Parilla’s 85-yard touchdown run with 9:21 to play. Parilla finished with 230 yards of offense, including 50 on two receptions, 68 on kickoff and 27 on punt returns. He also had a TD catch against the Indians.
For the season, Parilla averages 14.33 yards per carry. He has 368 yards on 28 receptions. He has scored five times and has gobbled up nearly 600 yards on special teams.
“You talk about playing with emotion and playing with heart,” Melnyk said. “(Edgar) does. He plays up and down sometimes. It gets in the way sometimes for him. It also helps him because he plays with that great emotion. He’s tough. He’s physical He wants the ball in his hands when it is time to make a play, and he does it a lot of times.”
So does David Harvey. The senior tailback leads the ground game with 957 yards on 133 carries. He also leads the team in touchdowns with 10. His 10th score came on a 57-yard TD ramble with 4:44 to play in the third quarter against the Indians. The score tied the game at 28. Harvey finished with 177 yards on 20 carries.
“He’s fast. He’s strong. He does everything we need him to do,” Melnyk said of Harvey. “Sometimes I think we take the ball out of his hands a little bit because we have other playmakers. When it’s crunch time and we need to lean on him, he is going to get the ball.”
The ball starts in James Stocker’s hands, and he played a key role in the win against the Indians, as well as the team’s entire success this season. Stocker tossed two TD strikes to Jack Young, and Young in turn threw a scoring strike to Joe Postufka in the win against the Indians.
Stocker has completed 111 of 187 passes for 1,529 yards and 12 scores this season. Young leads the team with 43 receptions and 624 yards. After Parilla, Patrick Moeller follows with 25 grabs for 280 yards.
Though slowed by a broken hand, Nate Bayer has five catches for 59 yards. He came up big for the Blue Devils with an interception at the 2-minute warning mark in the contest. It was the perfect ending for a game that did not start out well for the Blue Devils and featured a plethora of miscues and turnovers in the first half.
“We came out and played sloppy. We did some uncharacteristic things,” Melnyk said. “But we settled down and played football the way that we can play. We didn’t panic. We didn’t do a lot of yelling and screaming. We just told our kids to come out and play like champions. Just believe in ourselves and do what we do, and the game would turn,” Melnyk added.
“The kids were persistent and physical and made some plays there. No doubt we got a couple key stops there on defense. I loved the way we finished. We showed a lot of heart.”
Eric Kraus and Coleman Coco showed tenacity on defense, registering a team-high 11 and 10 tackles. Jack Stoddard followed with seven. Tucker Donati, Harvey, Nathan Hoaglund, Coleman Coco and Jack Stoddard all had key tackles for losses.