With most sports on hold, Ron Bracken looks back on his top 10 high school games from his time at the CDT

So here we are at what is usually one of the best times of the year, with the spring sports seasons just warming up and the winter seasons winding down. And trout season, usually a highlight of the spring, is open when it should be closed.

But for the most part, the world is upside down and backward because of the coronavirus, and recreationally we’ve got nowhere to go and nothing to do when we get there. So we watch reruns, read and pore over scrapbooks, reliving days and deeds from times when virus wasn’t such a scary word.

Which is how I’ve spent large chunks of recent days, looking back and putting together lists of great events, teams, coaches and athletes I’ve seen and covered while working at the Centre Daily Times. The operative word is “seen,” which eliminates anything that has happened since my retirement in 2008. What follows is a collection of great scholastic events from those years. It’s not scientific, just a purely subjective gathering of memories. No doubt yours will vary greatly.

On a November night in 1973, scholastic football reached its zenith in Centre County. On that night on a snowy Memorial Field with an overflow crowd looking on, State College and Pittsburgh Central Catholic, the Nos. 1 and 2 teams in the state, respectively, met for what amounted to a state championship game — this was pre-playoffs. Both were unbeaten, both had rosters littered with future Division I players.

The Little Lions included Matt and Paul Suhey, who both played at Penn State, John Sefter, who wrestled at Princeton, Clay Singletary, an offensive lineman at West Virginia, and wideout Gary Ellis, who played at Maryland. The star for the Vikings was quarterback Eddie Smith, who went on to play at Michigan Sate.

Sefter scored the first touchdown in what became a 37-26 Little Lion win. Paul Suhey was a co-captain of Penn State’s 1978 team while Matt Suhey went to to play 10 years in the NFL as a fullback for the Chicago Bear after starting four years at Penn State.

“That’s the best game that’s ever been played on this field,” said the late Jim Williams, State’s coach at the time.

Also in football are a couple of outstanding games in county history.

In 1963, Bald Eagle Area and Chief Logan played to a 26-26 tie in front of 5,500 fans at Wingate on a perfect October night. I was one of those fans that night. Both teams were unbeaten when they met. BEA was led by halfback Mike Condo, who became the school’s first Big 33 player. Chief Logan, which was part of the Indian Valley merger which became part of the Mifflin County School District, was led by a big end, Dave Bradley, who went on to become a starting tackle for Penn State’s unbeaten 1968 team.

The game ended with Chief Logan on BEA’s 1-foot line. Condo scored twice, including a 68-yard pass reception, rushed for 102 yards and caught four passes for 107. Bradley caught six passes for 113 yards. BEA finished the year with an 8-0-1 record.

In 2004, Tyrone visited Philipsburg-Osceola and the two staged an awesome defensive performance in front of an estimated 8,000 fans. In he first half P-O stopped Tyrone drives at its own 28, 7 and 16. In the fourth quarter Tyrone scored, but P-O’s Ryan Mostyn blocked the PAT with 2:58 left in the game. Tyrone drove to the P-O 24 but missed what would have been a game-winning field goal with 2:26 left.

There were plenty of memorable moments on the wrestling mats as well, including what was described as the Super Bowl of wrestling in 1984, when unbeaten State College visited unbeaten P-O.

Fans lined up in the P-O parking lot at 2:30 in the afternoon to get into the Mountie gym. Eventually 1,400 of them jammed the gym and another 200 watched on closed circuit TV in the auditorium. The Little Lions won, 30-12, but the highlight of the meet was a pairing of State’s Rob Koll and P-O’s Mark Sidorick. Koll won, 4-3. He later won a PIAA title, a national title at North Carolina and is now the coach at Cornell. Sidorick also won a PIAA crown and wrestled at Penn State.

Another great dual meet occurred in 1999 when BEA and McGuffey met in the semifinals of the PIAA tournament at Clarion. The Eagles won, 28-22 and went on to beat Upper Perkiomen, 53-0 in the inaugural PIAA team championship. McGuffey went into the meet ranked No. 1 in the state while BEA was third. BEA’s Curt Thompson moved up from 189 pounds and pinned McGuffey heavyweight Mike Abriatis in 1:32 to seal the win for the Eagles.

I was one of the 6,800 in Rec Hall to watch Wade Schlaes pin John Chatman in the 1968 PIAA finals, and that might have been the most dramatic bout I ever saw. But the most entertaining came in the 1988 PIAA quarterfinals when BEA’s Doug Taylor beat Shaler’s Mike Yuiska, 24-7 in 5:47.

What made it so interesting is that the previous year Yuiska had teched Taylor. In an Associated Press story leading up to the PIAA tournament, Yiska called himself “The Hammer” and declared he liked to hurt people. The BEA coaching staff clipped that article and taped it inside Taylor’s locker.

Taylor stopped a Yuiska takedown shot at the edge of the mat, then pushed Yuiska away from him. Then he went on to put on a takedown clinic that had the crowd in the old Hershey Park Arena mesmerized. Deep in the third period, Taylor cut Yuiska loose and looked over to Coach Dick Rhoades in his corner. Rhoades signaled for Taylor to let Yuiska up so he could go for a takedown and get the tech fall, which Taylor did, setting off a roar from the crowd, the likes of which is usually not heard in a quarterfinal bout. Taylor went on to win the 126-pound championship.

In baseball, one game that stands out was in the 2007 PIAA quarterfinals at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, when P-O and Seton LaSalle battled for 15 innings before the Mounties ran out of pitching and fell 7-6. The game went 12 innings before it had to be stopped due to failing light. The next day, Seton LaSalle broke through for the game winner on a fielder’s choice, a stolen base and a single through the infield. P-O pitchers struck out 19 in the marathon while Seton LaSalle’s pitchers gave up an equal amount.

The rise in popularity of softball and the success of the Centre County teams provided enough great moments for an article all its own.

But the most memorable game was played in 2003 when BEA and Penns Valley tangled in the rain for the District 6 championship.

The Lady Rams had won a state title the year before in Class A and then moved up to AA for the 2003 season. BEA was shooting for its first district title.

The Lady Eagles took a 5-1 lead heading into the top of the sixth. But rain stopped play while Penns Valley was batting. Play resumed and the Lady Rams scored six runs on two hits, three walks and an error for a 7-5 lead.

The rain intensified and finally the game was stopped and the teams went home, assuming play would resume the next day. But the umpires conferred with the district chairman and determined that the score would revert to the last full inning, which meant BEA won, 5-1.

Needless to say, the Ram fans were outraged at the decision.

“It is so incredibly unfair it’s unbelievable,’’ said Rams coach Don Lucas, who is now the head coach at BEA, at the time. “I don’t know how those guys can look us in the face. They outright robbed us.”

BEA coach Curt Heverly had mixed feelings about the outcome.

“I’m happy for our girls but disappointed at what they went through,” he said. “I really feel bad for Penns Valley. There are no winners here.”

This story was originally published April 12, 2020 at 8:00 AM.