MOUNT CARMEL - Football is a sport whose very essence is that of violent collisions, but the outcome of a game can hinge on an intangible such as emotion.
Friday in the Silver Bowl, on the 11th play of the District 4 Class AA title game, a seemingly mundane collision drained much of the emotion from the game. Then, Mount Carmel Area regained its composure and momentum with a three-touchdown second quarter and went on to shut out Bloomsburg 28-0 for its eighth district title - including one as a member of District 11 - and improve to 50-15 in postseason play.
Mount Carmel (11-1) now advances to PIAA play against District 3 champion Lancaster Catholic, a 21-14 winner over Wyomissing, Saturday at 1 p.m. at Kemp Memorial Stadium.
Although the Red Tornadoes were the prohibitive favorites against Bloomsburg (9-3), having lost just one playoff game ever on their home field, there was a special excitement surrounding the game. Leading the Panthers was senior quarterback and Rutgers recruit Blake Rankin, who had passed for 2,129 yards and 20 touchdowns and rushed for 1,476 yards and 28 touchdown.
On the game's opening series, Rankin completed 2-of-4 passes for 34 yards and carried six times for 18 yards. His final carry, a 6-yard run, set up a fourth-and-2 at the 11 and ended his career with a broken ankle.
"I've never been involved in a game where the emotion just went out of both teams like it did when Rankin went down," Mount Carmel coach Carmen DeFrancesco said. "That is the last thing you want to see, but at the same time we told our kids they had to go.
"We had to keep playing hard, and I thought we did that defensively. Thank goodness we were able to pick it up in the second quarter, but in the second half we just seemed to come out flat and it was what it was."
Ironically, it was the Tornadoes who used the passing game to take control of the game, getting two
touchdown passes from sophomore quarterback Zach Wasilewski. A 14-yard pass to Tyler Kwiatkowski on the third play of the second quarter capped a 10-play, 66-yard drive, then an interception by Elijah Duran set up a six-play, 46-yard drive that was capped by a 12-yard pass to Cody Shustack.
"We really didn't plan to do that much passing, but after we got the running game going, their defense made some adjustments," Wasilewski said. "On the first touchdown, we went play action and send the end on a drag underneath, and on the second one, we just sent the back out into the flat."
Although Wasilewski finished just 6-for-15 with 89 yards, the threat of the pass prevented the Panthers from stacking their defense to stop the run. That was all the Tornaodes needed to establish and ball-control ground game, rushing the ball 35 times for 225 yards.
Shustack led the running attack with nine carries for 114 yards, including a 60-yard touchdown run late in the half for a 21-0 lead and a 16-yard touchdown run after the second of two fourth-quarter interceptions by Jacob Kleman. Shustack also had an interception and two sacks for minus-16 yards.
Meyrick Lamb carried 16 times for 95 yards, giving him 1,338 for the season and joining Gary Diminick, Henry Hynoski and Brett and Jon Veach as 1,300-yard rusher for the Tornadoes. With Shustack now at 1,089 yards for the season, it gives the Tornadoes two 1,000-yard rusher in a season for just the fourth time -- and first since 1970 when it was done by DeFrancesco and Hynoski.
"We were confident we could run the ball, but this turned out to be a lot different game than we thought it would be," Shustack said. "Our prayers go out to Blake Rankin, and seeing him go down just seemed to take a lot out of everyone.
"Still, we were confident our defense would get the job done. Again, everyone did their job."
And, emotion or not, the Tornadoes did the job well enough to move on in postseason play.