Academy Park can only play foil in PIAA’s annual recruiting game

WHITEMARSH >> Togba Porte’s emotional victory lap a week ago lasted all of 10 minutes. Before the District 1 championship photos were loaded to social media, the Academy Park senior defensive end’s focus had flipped.

“I’m really tired of getting stopped here,” Porte pleaded then, surrounded by jubilant teammates on the muddied turf of Springfield High School.

In four years, the ‘here’ has changed, from state quarterfinals to semis, from Class AAA to 5A, from cityscapes to suburban vistas. But what hasn’t — and what won’t, no matter how much the PIAA beats its chest about its latest stab at inclusion and expansion — is AP’s predicament. Nights like Friday and the 37-0 walloping served by perennial football factory Archbishop Wood aren’t gravitating much closer to competitive balance or whatever hollow bywords fill press releases.

In AP’s dynastic span of three District 1 titles in four seasons, the representatives of a tiny slice of Southeastern Delco have been trounced twice by Wood and its blue-chip-laden suburban all-star squad, and (now 4A) Imhotep Charter with its pan-Philadelphian reach. The only aspect that’s changed in the PIAA’s reconfiguration was that Wood and Imhotep no longer need beat up on each other before slamming a District 1 foe.

“At some point, you come to the realization during the game that that’s what it’s going to be, as hard as it may be,” Academy Park coach Jason Vosheski said. “Because sometimes the Xs are better than the Os and that’s just how it is.”

From the start Friday, it wasn’t a matter of belief, as Academy Park and its vociferous “we’re ready for y’all” team entrance hailed. All week, Vosheski instilled in his players the belief that if they played their “A” game, they stood a chance at reaching the turf in Hershey the following week.

But reality hit sometime in that first half, and it hit hard. The Knights (13-2) didn’t play anything approximating that “A” game, nowhere near the gutsy, marvelous performance delivered a week earlier in upsetting Springfield for the district title. They coughed up two first-half fumbles, staring at a 31-0 deficit at the break. The other margins — 272-64 in yards of total offense, 36-15 on offense snaps — were equally unforgiving.

But then there are those other realities that rear their ugly heads when there’s time to consider them, as in a flag-ridden second half that descended perilously close to farce once Wood secured the running clock on its first possession. There’s no questioning Wood’s superiority, with Temple-bound running back Raheem Blackshear totaling 160 first-half yards and quarterback Jack Colyar distributing to a passel of wideouts like Kyle Pitts and prized Division I prospect Mark Webb. And you’d be hard-pressed to imagine it’s not being worthy of a fourth state banner in six years come next week.

But when you step back and plot those players’ hometowns — Philadelphia proper for Blackshear, Langhorne for Colyar and Abington for Pitts — you realize that suddenly the difference between Sharon Hill and Collingdale is insignificant. When you witness AP’s roster decimated by nagging injuries on a frigid night in its 15th game of the season (among the affected: Starters Teddy Wright, Amara Kenneth, Azeez Badmus, Elijah Berrymon, Taj Brooker and Skyl0r Fillis, who pulled up lame when he appeared to have the defense beat on a reception that could’ve gone to the house), the perspective comes into sharp and ruthless focus.

“We just had to fight,” Porte said. “And they’re a build-a-team. But I never hang my head on that, recruits. We played, we fought.”

“It’s never easy,” Vosheski said. “We have been there before. It doesn’t make it any easier, and especially when you play a competitive game like it was last week, where either team could’ve won, and then you go to this. It’s unfortunate for the kids.”

The conundrum is how AP can plummet from the heights of last week, from feeling like deserving champions, to this week’s struggle. How in a survive-and-advance tournament could the reward for winning be a challenge so disproportionately lopsided?

Here’s another question, one that has not been rectified by the PIAA’s reclassification but one in which a small group of vocal proponents has been mollified by the assurance of two extra coaches getting to call themselves state champions each year: How can a tournament be deemed functional in which the fourth team left standing in the state is 37 points inferior to the ostensible first team? How is fairness served in a game so lopsided that Archbishop Wood’s coordinators unplugged and disembarked their perch atop the pressbox after three quarters? A state semifinal featuring two JV’s whiling away the fourth quarter is trying in vain to find resolution from a poorly-constructed field of teams.

Vosheski put it in human terms. In a year or two or 10, he won’t remember Porte by what he did Friday night against Wood, nor Wright, nor four-year starter Chris Thomas, nor any of his standouts.

“I’m going to think about all of the accomplishments they had,” Vosheski said.

A forgettable state semifinal, by its very design, not in the magnitude of result, signifies a broken system.

To contact Matthew De George, email mdegeorge@delcotimes.com; follow him on Twitter @sportsdoctormd.