Panthers end winless skid against Mounties

Ron Bracken

PHILIPSBURG — The Lewistown football program has had two long losing streaks in recent years and Steve Guthoff was there when both of them ended.

CDT/Michelle Bixby

Philipsburg's Reggie Coval takes down Lewistown's Kirby Moist (22) during the Lewistown at Philipsburg-Osceola varsity football game. CDT/Michelle Bixby

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Suffice it to say he was a lot happier Friday night than he was back in 1996, when the Panthers upset his Philipsburg- Osceola team.

This time he was on the winning sideline, as Lewistown shocked the Mounties 19-14 to snap a 19-game losing streak in a game that featured three long-distance touchdowns in a span of 1:30.

“It’s nice to be on the receiving end,” said Guthoff, who served as the head coach at P-O and Bellefonte, then did a stint as an assistant at Tyrone before taking over at Lewistown this year. “I wasn’t aware the streak was 19, but these kids have worked incredibly hard and they’ve responded to some adversity we’ve had. If we had been able to score some points in our first two games we could be 2-1 right now.”

The Panthers hadn’t scored a point this year until Friday night. Earlier this week Guthoff scrapped the offense and went in a new direction.

“These kids have only worked with this offense for four days,” he said.

But it was the Panther defense that came up with most of the big plays, forcing P-O into five turnovers (four interceptions and a fumble) which allowed it to withstand a late Mountie surge built on touchdowns of 90 and 73 yards.

“It’s uncharacteristic of our defense to give up big plays,” Guthoff added. “But you have to give P-O credit, they came back.”

Just not far enough to complete the comeback.

After missing a scoring opportunity when Kody Stein’s 35-yard field goal was blocked with 3:26 left in the first half, the Panthers got the ball back following an 11-yard punt which went out of bounds at the P-O 46. Stein got loose for 29 yards on the first play but then the P-O defense stiffened, forcing Lewistown to run seven more plays before Bill Madden found tight end Dan Wheeler in the back of the end zone from two yards out with 7 seconds left in the half. The PAT kick was no good.

Lewistown took the ball to start the second half and drove from its own 19 to the P-O 27, before Madden was sacked by Jason Supko on fourth down.

On P-O’s first play, Steve Rusnak fumbled and the Panthers recovered at the Mountie 12. Three plays later, Stein scored from the 5 with 3:32 left in the quarter. The pass for two points was incomplete.

P-O appeared to be making a comeback when it drove to the Lewistown 13, when it got the ball back but on fourth down Reggie Coval was intercepted at the 1 by Austin Scheffel, who ran the ball out to the 35.

The Mountie defense forced a punt and then things got crazy.

Putting the ball in play at his own 21 with 11:48 left in the game, Rusnak was sacked for an 11 yard loss. On the next play, he took a direct snap and bolted straight up the middle, going 90 yard for the score. Zach Czap’s PAT made it 12-7 with 11:14 still to play.

Needing a defensive stop, P-O had the Panthers in a third-and-7 at their own 19, when Madden connected with Stein on a screen pass and he went 81 yards down the sidelines to put the Panthers up 18-7. Following a 15-yard penalty on the first PAT kick, Stein kicked the PAT to make it 19-7 with 10:02 left.

The Mounties weren’t done. Following the kickoff, they had the ball on their own 27 but not for long. Rusnak found Czap running free down the middle, hit him in stride and he outran the pursuit for a 73- yard touchdown, then kicked the PAT to make it 19-14 and there was still 9:44 left on the clock.

That made 244 yards and three touchdowns in 1:30.

P-O had two more scoring opportunities down the stretch, but Rusnak was picked off by Tyler Hamler at the Lewistown 48 with 3:33 to go and Coval was picked by Scheffel at the Lewistown 15 with 1:06 remaining.

The Panthers took an intentional safety when Madden ran out of the end zone with 11 seconds remaining.

“Turnovers and field position. That will definitely beat you,” said Mountie coach Jeff Vroman. “We hit a big pass with two minutes left and then they made a big hit and got the interception. We missed opportunities. And we gave them the ball at the 9.

“We just stood around and Lewistown made the plays. We didn’t start playing until there was about 11 minutes left.

“I don’t think the kids took Lewistown seriously and I don’t know where they got that. We talked to them about it all week and again before the game. We didn’t make the plays when we had to make them.

“We let them throw that screen pass because we didn’t come up and make the play. You can’t stand around and wait for someone else to make the play and that’s what we were doing. We had eight or nine kids doing their job and one or two breaking down.

“You have to give Lewistown credit, they wanted the football game more than we did. Nothing they did surprised us. Everything they showed us we showed the kids in practice. But you can’t turn the ball over. In our two scrimmages and in our first game, we didn’t turn the ball over. In the last two games, we’ve turned it over 10 times.”