Here’s what to look for and how to watch Week 3 of Centre County high school football
Week 3 of the high school football season is upon us, but only one Centre County team is set to play.
Philipsburg-Osceola (1-0) will try to stay undefeated when it takes on another unbeaten team in the Central Scarlet Dragons (2-0). This will be P-O’s first home game of the season, after last week’s game against Penns Valley was canceled.
As some Pennsylvania school districts are letting more fans into their stadiums after a federal judge’s ruling that tossed statewide pandemic limits on crowd size, P-O decided to give each member of the Mountie band, football team and cheerleading squad three tickets to distribute, which will bring the stadium to 25% capacity. Only those with tickets will be allowed to enter, and must wear masks at all times and abide by social distancing requirements.
Bald Eagle Area, Bellefonte and Penns Valley will all sit out Friday’s slate due to the fallout from a Clearfield football player testing positive last week for COVID-19. The Rams are in quarantine until Friday, making it impossible to play due to a lack of practice. They were set to take on the Eagles, who will stay sidelined after not finding a replacement team to play Friday night.
The Red Raiders have opted to celebrate Senior Night on Friday rather than taking on a new opponent after they were originally set to play Clearfield.
When they return to play, Bellefonte will also have more fans permitted in the stadium. The Bellefonte school board came to a general consensus Tuesday that athletics can permit up to 25% capacity with four tickets going to each home student involved, and two going to each away student involved.
Let’s take a look at how this week’s lone matchup is shaping up.
Central (2-0) at Philipsburg-Osceola (1-0)
Time: 7 p.m.
How to watch: WHVL (TV), Link will be provided on P-O Athletics social media accounts (Online streaming)
Coaches: C — David Baker; P-O — Jeff Vroman
Last meeting: Central 49-7, last season
Players to watch: C — Jeff Hoenstine, QB; P-O — Kaleb Stamm, RB
The skinny: The game between the Mountaineers and Scarlet Dragons will be a stylistic clash on offense.
Central boasts arguably the best player in the Mountain League in Hoenstine — a sophomore — who had big games in the team’s first two weeks. Both of those contests were against Centre County teams, in Bald Eagle Area and Bellefonte, and gave the quarterback a chance to show off his dual-threat capabilities.
He’s thrown for 424 yards on 33-of-51 passing and has rushed for 105 yards on 19 carries to lead the Scarlet Dragons on offense. He’s accounted for seven of the team’s eight touchdowns on offense, but his impact has gone far beyond the box score.
Hoenstine turns sacks into touchdowns and three-yard losses into 20-yard gains with his ability to escape as a runner and in the pocket.
After his team’s 33-9 loss to Central, Bald Eagle head coach Jesse Nagle gushed about the talented sophomore quarterback.
“Hoenstine is a special athlete,” Nagle said. “There’s no doubt. We had him several times, we thought he was gonna be sacked, and all of a sudden he throws a touchdown. He broke our back a couple times.”
Philipsburg-Osceola needs to prioritize slowing down the sophomore in order to give its offense a chance to keep pace.
For the Mountaineers, this game will be about ball control and keeping the ball out of Central’s — and namely Hoenstine’s — hands. They ran their offense exclusively out of the Wing-T in their week one 35-20 win over Huntingdon.
The offense — which was run by Vroman in his first go around at the helm of the program — runs a limited number of plays but runs them to near-perfection when it’s humming on all cylinders. It relies heavily on multiple rushers to grind away at the opponent and break big plays in the running game, with a passing attack that is used sparingly to keep the defense off-balance.
Stamm and fellow senior Hunter Weitoish led the team to 365 yards on the ground against the Bearcats with both players eclipsing 130 yards in the game. Stamm saw the most rushing attempts of the two with 22 and gained 156 yards on those rushes. He found the end zone twice for the Mountaineers in the game and proved the offense can still be effective in the Mountain League.
Now he and the rest of the offense will be tasked with doing that against a much tougher opponent that held Bald Eagle and Bellefonte to 23 combined points in its first two games.
If P-O can keep Hoenstine and the Central offense off the field and grind away at the clock, it’ll have a chance to earn its second win in a season for the first time since 2011.
This story was originally published September 24, 2020 at 3:29 PM.
