MECHANICSBURG, Pa. — Anthony Crews has excelled at times this season when he was asked to step up when teams centered their attention on senior Quinton Martin.
But the Belle Vernon junior showed everyone he is a game breaker in his own right and helped the Leopards win a championship in the process.
Crews took the opening kickoff back 71 yards for a touchdown, then scored on an incredible 62-yard run on a busted play to help Belle Vernon (13-1) pull out a 38-7 victory against District 11 champion Northwestern Lehigh (15-1) in the PIAA Class 3A championship game at Cumberland Valley’s Chapman Field.
“It’s amazing. It’s one of the best feelings ever,” Crews said. “My freshman year, I was at Monessen, and we really wasn’t that successful, but I came over here. I proved my talent. I started on defense. We got a WPIAL title, a state, and we did it again. It’s amazing.”
Belle Vernon is only the seventh WPIAL school to repeat as state champions, joining Farrell (1995-96), Rochester (2000-01) and Clairton (2009-12) in Class 1A, South Fayette (2013-14) in Class 2A, Central Valley (2020-21) and Thomas Jefferson, which did in in Class 3A in 2007-08 and Class 4A in 2019-20.
“I don’t know, man. I really don’t. It feels good,” Belle Vernon coach Matt Humbert said. “I think the thing that sticks out to me the most is the happiness associated with it. Obviously, it’s extreme joy for me, but I think of the coaches, ... our support staff and everybody and how they sacrifice for us to get to this point.”
While Crews did his damage early, Martin slammed the door. The Penn State recruit and top-rated senior in the state raced untouched around left end for a 92-yard touchdown with 6:00 remaining in the third quarter to give the Leopards a 28-7 lead.
Martin finished with eight rushes for 133 yards and five catches for another 24.
“It means the world. There is no better feeling than to win a state championship, not one but two years in a row,” Martin said. “That means a lot to me to enjoy this time with my team and end on a good note.”
There is no doubt Belle Vernon wanted to get off to a fast start when it won the coin toss and elected to receive rather than defer to the second half, but no one could have anticipated what came next.
Northwestern Lehigh kicked short and toward the left sideline away from Martin, but Crews gobbled it up, deked around a couple of Tigers players and hugged the boundary to the goal line to give Belle Vernon a 7-0 lead just 13 seconds into the game.
“I knew they were going to kick the ball to me when ‘Q’ and (Kole) Doppelheuer switched sides back deep,” Crews said. “I was prepared to catch and go.”
Crews’ second score may have been even more impressive.
Quarterback Braden Laux flipped a backward pass to Crews, who was heading left to right in the Belle Vernon backfield, but the ball was near his head and he juggled it for what seemed like an eternity before he got it under control. When he did, he immediately reversed his field, cut back down the left sideline and went 62 yards to the house for a 14-0 Leopards lead 4:08 into the game.
“It was a little jet sweep. That’s my play,” Crews said. “I caught it and I saw the cutback and I was gone.”
At that point, it appeared Belle Vernon was going to run Northwestern Lehigh out of the building, but a fumble on a punt return by Adam LaCarte gave the Tigers new life at the Leopards 37.
That was when the shadow of Belle Vernon’s 2022 championship came back to haunt the Tigers.
Northwestern Lehigh drove the ball easily into scoring range and had a 1st-and-goal at the Belle Vernon 7. Three runs by running back Dalton Clymer got the Tigers to the Leopards 1, but on fourth down, Clymer tried to cap it off with a run out of the wildcat but was stuffed for a 1-yard loss by Jake Gedekoh — who later scored the final touchdown — and the Tigers were turned away.
Last year, in their win against Neumann-Goretti, the Leopards forced a fumble at the goal line on 3rd-and-inches to preserve their 9-8 victory.
“The big thing for us was what we were able to do from a line standpoint,” Humbert said. “We’ve got the (skill) dudes, there’s no doubt about that, but it’s all about whether that line can get push.”
Belle Vernon then did what it always seems to do. It counterattacked.
It may not have been the 99-yard drive Southern Columbia used on Friday in the closing seconds to defeat Westinghouse 21-20, but Belle Vernon ripped off a nine-play, 98-yard march, keyed by a 49-yard Gedekoh run and capped by a 2-yard quarterback sneak from Laux that gave the Leopards a 21-0 lead with 1:48 remaining in the half.
Though Northwestern Lehigh did come up with a late drive to get back within two touchdowns 21-7 at the intermission on a 17-yard pass from Shane Leh to Landen Matson, it was too deep a hole from which to climb.
“Obviously, that’s not how you draw it up or script it, but that’s how it went,” Northwester Lehigh coach Josh Snyder said. “Our kids didn’t quit. We just kept fighting, but they’re a good football team and they really didn’t have to get out of character.”
Keith Barnes: kbarnes.pg@gmail.com and Twitter @kbarnes_pghsprt
First Published: December 9, 2023, 9:39 p.m.
Updated: December 10, 2023, 12:36 a.m.
