A FACE IN THE CROWD – WEEK 6
Where are the songs of spring? Ay, Where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
From “To Autumn” by John Keats
Here in the Mobile FITC Command Center/Luxury RV, located this week behind the sign that says, “Welcome to Taylor, Birthplace of Many People Over the Years”, I have been touched by the departure of summer and the arrival of autumn. Keats’ lines above have me straining to hear the music of the fall in the traffic sounds outside the Sheetz here on Main Street. Jeffrey, our intrepid German Shepherd, is not having my melancholy demeanor. He continuously rolls his Magic 8 Ball to my feet. The message in the clairvoyant orb is “Do Better”. I understand. Another 3-2 week in the Fistfights has mired me in the mediocre, and we can’t continue this way. Sparky rebooted the data center in the RV, loading all sorts of arcane facts like trends found in Brett Stage’s Facebook posts and the history of Catholic school rivalries in NEPA. WE READY, as the song says, ready for Week 6.
But first, we need to review the important lessons we learned from Week 6.
LESSON 1
Dallas is good. Coach Mannello’s Mounts absolutely laid one on Ciro Cinti’s group from Wilkes-Barre last weekend to take control of the Pizza L’Oven Division of the Wyoming Valley Conference. On a serious note, Dallas can line up with any team in District 2. Talan Geskey is absolutely masterful at the helm of a diverse offense that can run or pass effectively, depending on what the moment calls for. The problem for the Mounts is competition. Their most serious challenge will come in Week 10 against the Dawgs in Berwick, but I fear that even that contest won’t be close. How battle-tested will the Baby Blue and White be when it’s time to go to war with Valley View or North Pocono. That remains to be seen.
LESSON 2
Holy Tectonic Shifts, Batman! Did we here at FITC not say that the Fightin’ Buckhorns of the Paupack were ready for a signature victory? You’re right. We didn’t. We picked Delaware Valley. I blame Sparky for his unhealthy obsession with former Penn State tight ends. He has a scrapbook filled with Kyle Brady headlines. And I believe he and Mike Gesicki are Facebook Friends. But, I digress. The Brazen Bucks have announced themselves as a force to be reckoned with in Divison I of the Lackawanna Football Conference. And that is most certainly news. While the loss to Honesdale in the opener remains a head-scratcher, it is also in the remote past. Since then, Coach Matt Nawrocki’s squad has rolled up four straight conquests, with West Scranton on the menu this weekend. They, too, will compete in the 4A classification of District 2 with the aforementioned Mounts of Dallas, North Pocono, and Valley View, easily the most intriguing of all of the district tournaments. We in the Command Center anxiously await the upcoming schedule for the Bucks which includes Prep, Valley View, North Pocono, and Abington Heights.
LESSON 3
The record for the Wyoming Valley West Spartans over the past three years is 2-30. The once proud program had fallen on extremely hard times, almost unthinkable for a school with the population that Valley West boasts. Enter Brydon Rukstalis. The first-year mentor of the suddenly super-charged Spartans has his boys off to a 3-2 start. That is cause for celebration in Plymouth, and it’s not even time for the Kielbasa Festival! Coach Ruk (I like the sound of that – it’s tuff, as the kids say) has a pair of junior playmakers in Damian Eastman and Malique Campbell, gamebreakers the likes of which the old stadium in Kingston has not seen in quite a long time. The Conference of the Damned is a bit less moribund when the Spartans are good. Let’s hope Coach Ruk can add to his wildly successful start. And, on another note, there is no better name in all of high school football than Gadgidas Reisinger, number 1 in your program and in your hearts. Bad Gad can play a little bit too as a dual threat back who compliments Eastman and Campbell. Happy Days in Plymouth.
LESSON 4
Jeffrey and Sparky are suckers for a good quarterback. Well, they’re suckers for lots of things, including sketchy floating craps games and Miniature Collies who bat their eyelashes. We are witnesses to a bevy of outstanding field generals, but four are at the pinnacle as far as I’m concerned. First, Brady McCormick has been a revelation in the #9SQUAREMILES. 9 touchdown tosses against a single interception, along with nearly 600 yards passing, puts him at the top of the charts. Riverside’s Brayden Rose is a unicorn. He is a cyborg playing quarterback. One gets the feeling that he can take the game over whenever he decides that it’s time. He may be the best athlete at the position in District 2 in the last decade. Talan Geskey of Dallas is more magician than quarterback. His ballhandling is befuddling to opposing defenses as he brings an array of fakes and feints that indicate his firm grasp on the Mountaineer playbook. Finally, I put Chase Zimmerman on this list. While the stats of the North Pocono senior are not gawdy, he is polished, precise, and poised. I love alliteration, don’t you? Zimmerman does exactly what Coach Greg Dolhon has coached him to do. And that’s be a consummate winner. I’ll take that.
LESSON 5
Dunmore, Honesdale, Lakeland, Riverside – something’s gotta give. These four rivals from Division 2 of the LFC have been eyeing each other warily from a distance for the first five weeks. This week, the fun begins in the division when Lakeland travels to scenic Taylor (sarcasm) for the first of the six matchups that will decide the titlist. We’ll speak more specifically about that contest in the Fistfights, but let’s take a broader look at the four teams in question. Three of those schools are undefeated, and Honesdale has been scarred just once, by North Pocono, ostensibly the most talented team in Division 1. Three have veteran coaches who have been through the chase before, while Riverside’s Jim Tucker, in his first year wearing the big headset, learned at the feet of the Dalai Lama of offensive gurus, Sir Harry Armstrong. Each of them possesses a gamebreaker in the backfield, two runners (Gabe Duda and Weston Yannone) and two quarterbacks (Jackson Pochas and Brayden Rose). The final five weeks should be wild since each will feature at least one matchup between these four evenly matched competitors. Should be fun.
That’s some weighty and profound edification for you reprobates. Jeffrey has been looking on over my shoulder and is so overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information that he just sighed and collapsed on a pile of Nico Antoniacci press photos that we found outside Riverside High School.
So, armed with all of that fresh information, and perhaps with some overripe vegetables, we move on to the main course of these pigskin smorgasbord, the Five Fistfights.
FISTFIGHT #5 TUNKHANNOCK (0-5) at MONTROSE (4-1)
Don’t question me about my choices. My mind is controlled by whims, whispers, and whiskey. You cretins out there might not know that Montrose Meteor Mentor Brett Stage is a proud graduate of Tunkhannock and will see this weekend’s contest as a bit of a holy war. Tunkhannock is indeed winless but may look at this trip to Susquehanna County as an opportunity to spin the second half of the season in the right direction. But, setting aside the loss to the Crazed Crusaders two weeks ago, Montrose’s season has been nothing less than magical. I’ll take Coach Stage and the boys in a good one.
FISTFIGHT #4 OLD FORGE (1-4) at LACKAWANNA TRAIL (0-5)
Ok, look. Anybody can tell you that Dallas is going to boatrace Hazleton this weekend, but who can pick these games filled with intrigue, vagaries, and hidden storylines. Damn straight, we can. Sparky hurdled over the bench seats at the back of the RV to add his zeal to that statement. We’ve been bitten a few times by the memories of past glory at Trail. While a rebuild was in order at Tunnel Hill, I don’t know if anyone expected 0-5 at this point. These two teams were always the bellcows in the division, and still may be before all is said and done. It’s hard to believe that a game between schools with their respective records after five games is crucial, but it is. I see low scoring. I see two teams bent on running the rock. I see fire and brimstone. I see Jeffrey chasing three kids across the parking lot outside Sheetz. I see Trail by a tuddy.
FISTFIGHT #3 “The Keith Jackson Game”
HOLY CROSS (2-3) at HOLY REDEEMER (1-4)
Ol’ Keith is ready with his poetic best, as he gets you ready for this clash between the two Catholic high schools in the Diocese of Scranton…
Here on the corner of Pierce and Tioga, the calendar has changed to October and one would expect a drop in temperature. But tonight, with the passions running higher than a cat in a room full of vacuums, the blood running through the veins of these young men is hellishly hot. Catholics espouse the dogma of loving thy neighbor, but when thy neighbor is wearing different color breetches than yours, you forget the catechism and take out the billyclub. The priests in the parishes in Dunmore and Wilkes-Barre are going to do overtime in the confession box when this is over, because we expect mayhem and malice from the Royals and the Crusaders. The Holy War begins now.
Sparky just administered a forearm shiver to the refrigerator. He’s fired up after listening to Ol’ Keith. The Crazed Crusaders have won two straight, but I believe the Royals are a better football team. Redeemer in a close one.
FISTFIGHT #2 DELAWARE VALLEY (1-4) at VALLEY VIEW (3-2)
This is the ultimate “Who are they?” game. One of these teams can still be spoken of as one of the big boys in the division. The other slips into the nether world of mediocrity that swallows up middling football programs at this time of year. The Cougars got well last week against Scranton, scoring the points that did not come as easily in the prior week against North Pocono. Delaware Valley suffered a staggering loss against Wallenpaupack. The score indicated that the Buckhorns were significantly better than the Warriors, a reality that shocked much of the area, including many in Milford. I think this game goes to the fourth quarter with the result still in doubt. I like the Cougars in the Den to stay in the conversation both in the conference and in the district.
FISTFIGHT #1 THE POCONO TRANSPORTATION GAME OF THE WEEK
LAKELAND (5-0) at RIVERSIDE (5-0)
Sparky spent all day yesterday, in his role as Junior Assistant Route Manager at Pocono Transportation, attempting to sell his boss, and our chief sponsor, Aaron, on the wonders of AI-created bus routes. The problem is that Sparky was not utilizing popular platforms like ChatGPT or Grok or Muse. Sparky likes SentientSteve, a rather pedestrian form of artificial neurons that puts things in common parlance for idiots like Sparky to understand. Needless to say, Aaron quietly listened to Sparky’s ramblings, shook his head, and told our guy to stick to degenerate gambling.
As far as the Tussle in Taylor is concerned, there are a great number of similarities between the programs as we delineated in the Lessons earlier. But I believe that I have identified the X-factor in this game, and he does not play quarterback. I look for senior receiver, Chase Rosenkrans, to be the driving force in a Lakeland victory. 24 receptions for 286 yards and three tuddies separates him from all of the other non-qb skill players in the ball game. I see number 5 making a few plays in the final period to secure this win or the Chiefs.
Will this be the week we hit 5 for 5? Our sponsor, Aaron, is not pleased with our palpable ineptitude in choosing winners, so this may be our final week. But have faith in me. Have faith in Sparky. Have faith in Jeffrey, who has had great success begging for food from the patrons at Sheetz.
Finally, let’s get to the Power 5. And if you don’t like my choices, make up your own list. Don’t cost nothin’.
THE POWER 5 – the five best football teams in all of District 2, heedless of record, classification, or Snapstreaks…
1 – DALLAS (5-0) (4A)
2 – SCRANTON PREP (4-1) (3A)
3 – NORTH POCONO (5-0) (4A)
4 – DUNMORE (5-0) (2A)
5 – VALLEY VIEW (3-2) (4A)
