The uncertainty permeated throughout the Mohawk High School football team.
Due to a hazing incident after a preseason practice, Tim McCutcheon wasn’t even sure if he would remain as the team’s coach. The players weren’t sure when, or if, they would have a game to play. After all, Mohawk saw Middletown High, a team near Harrisburg, fire their coach and cancel the entire season over hazing incidents.
Mohawk’s team was shut down for more than two weeks. A scrimmage and two games were canceled and the team had no practices while an investigation was conducted by the Lawrence County District Attorney’s office and the school.
But the Mohawk administration kept McCutcheon as coach and games were eventually played. Come Friday, the WPIAL playoffs start, and look who is still playing. Mohawk will be in the postseason for only the eighth time since the school started playing football 98 years ago.
So this year, these are not the Mohawk Warriors as much as they are the Mohawk Survivors.
“You have to give a lot of credit to our players,” McCutcheon said. “It was a roller coaster ride for them, honestly. With the whole situation and what we dealt with, we were obviously behind going into the season.”
Mohawk finished 4-4 overall and tied for third in the Class 2A Midwestern Conference with a 4-3 record. The Warriors were given the No. 9 seed and play at No. 8 McGuffey.
“We didn’t even get our game legs under us until maybe the third game we played,” McCutcheon said. “With so many emotions, the expectations just became, ‘Let’s try to bring everyone together as one and just think about what we had ahead of us that week.’ We couldn’t have any long-term goals because we had to try and get unity first and try to block out all the obvious noise. We just had to focus on one game at a time.”
After starting 0-2, Mohawk won four of five, including a 22-8 victory against Western Beaver, which was 7-1 at the time.
McCutcheon will only talk in generalities about the whole hazing ordeal. But he was emotionally crushed at the beginning of the season over the incident. On Sept. 2, the Mohawk superintendent office issued a statement saying the football season would go on and the hazing incident “was limited to a small number of individual players and no adults had pre-existing knowledge of any hazing.”
Still, McCutcheon took the incident hard.
“I will always have mixed feelings,” McCutcheon said. “It happened on my watch. I take my accountability of my players seriously. I take my molding of young men more seriously than even the coaching aspect of it.”
When you consider Mohawk’s history, McCutcheon has done a tremendous job in his nine seasons as the Warriors’ coach. Of those eight WPIAL playoffs appearances, four have come under McCutcheon, and all within the past six years.
“We’re a small rural school that’s not polluted with stud athletes,” McCutcheon said. “We have to count on being tough and executing.
“At the end of the day, making the playoffs is a big deal at Mohawk. There wasn’t much history here before. When you grew up playing youth football, you grew up watching the high school team get smashed and you thought that was your fate when you got up there. Our staff has done a great job in turning things around. There is a sense of accomplishment. With all of the adversity the kids have dealt with, I’m proud of them.”
Serra’s 1,000 and 1,000
It’s notable for a number of high school teams when their quarterback throws for 1,000 yards in the regular season. But Serra did a double take on 1,000-yard passers this season. That is highly unusual.
Serra sophomore Quadir Stribling threw for 1,271 yards, completing 73 of 128. Senior Elijah Ward threw for 1,092, completing 50 of 83. Ward also was the team’s second-leading rusher with 513 yards.
Ward and Stribling will be keys when Serra, the defending WPIAL champion, plays host to Washington in a first-round game Friday.
Almost 1,000 and 1,000
Only 13 players in WPIAL history are known to throw for 1,000 yards and rush for 1,000 in the regular season. Neshannock’s Johnny Huff came so close to being No. 14.
Huff, a senior quarterback, ran for 285 yards last Friday against Mohawk and finished with 1,609 yards on the ground. But he threw for only 44 yards and finished with 960 passing.
Neshannock plays Burrell Friday and Burrell features one of the top running backs in Class 2A in Devin Beattie, who has rushed for 1,375 yards.
Other games
• Keystone Oaks has a five-game winning streak and has three shutouts during the streak. But the Eagles’ defense will be tested by Apollo-Ridge running back Nick Curci, who has 1,437 yards rushing.
• This is Ligonier Valley’s third year in the WPIAL and second consecutive year in the playoffs. Ligonier Valley will be looking for its first playoff win when it plays Western Beaver. Ligonier Valley lost in the first round of the playoffs a year ago.
• Marvin Mills is used to being in the playoffs with the Aliquippa football team. Mills used to be an Aliquippa assistant, but this is his first year as Sto-Rox’s head coach and he has the Vikings in the playoffs as the No. 3 seed. They will play Riverside in first-round game. Sto-Rox made it at least to the WPIAL semifinals the past three years.
Mike White: mwhite@post-gazette.com and Twitter @mwhiteburgh
First Published: November 1, 2022, 6:08 p.m.
