Bruce Harbach has spent most of his life on the football field, the majority of it on the sideline as a coach.
That was obvious Friday night.
His Schuylkill Valley Panthers defeated Kutztown 49-21 in a Lancaster-Lebanon Section 5 opener at Kutztown for his 150th career victory.
And they did it after star running back Dominic Giuffre suffered an arm or hand injury on a hit in the first half that knocked him out of the game.
Harbach, pleased to earn the milestone win, took it all the other stuff in stride. He’s seen it all before.
“Our kids didn’t hang their heads,” Harbach said. “It happens. Injuries are part of football. But when a player like that goes down, you know, I feel for him. My heart’s out for him. He’s such a good kid and such a great player.”
Harbach had no specifics on Giuffre’s injury, who he said was at the hospital. The 6-0, 175-pound senior, an All-State selection in Class 3A by the Pennsylvania Football Writers last season, walked off the sideline midway through the second quarter.
Harbach said he expects Giuffre to be out “probably a week or two.” He ran for 1,546 yards and 27 touchdowns last season and went into Friday with 366 yards on 59 carries and had scored seven TDs. He had four carries for 18 yards Friday.
“We’ll see what happens,” Harbach said.
In the meantime, Harbach said it will be “next man up.”
Guys stepped up Friday.
Quarterback Logan Nawrocki, a junior, completed 11-of-14 passes for 224 yards and five touchdowns. Cooper Hohenadel, another junior, scored three TDs, one on a 1-yard run, one on a 26-yard reception and one on an 87-yard kickoff return. He also had a 30-yard punt return to set up a touchdown.
And junior Kowen Gerner had three catches for 104 yards, all touchdowns. He scored on catches of 12, 78 and 14 yards, the final one being a beautiful catch where he extended in the back of the end zone.
“It’s awesome,” Nawrocki said of Gerner’s performance. “I think we just have a connection. I feel like I can throw anything to him and he’ll catch it. I mean, that one back there (the 14-yarder), that was an insane catch.”
The biggest key may have been that the Panthers (1-0, 3-1) also forced five fumbles, recovering four in the first half to take a 35-0 halftime lead.
“Against that offense, they try to control the clock, so we gotta make some turnovers and we did,” Harbach said. “Got the ball back and a quick-strike offense. We took care of business.”
The first giveaway by Kutztown (0-1, 1-3) ended a drive that had reached the Schuylkill Valley 34. The second gave the Panthers the ball at the Cougars’ 37 and led to Nawrocki’s 12-yard TD pass to Gerner to make it 21-0.
The third stopped a drive that had reached the Panthers’ 3. And the fourth came on the first play from scrimmage after the 78-yard Nawrocki-to-Gerner pass made it 27-0.
Five plays later, Gerner made his 14-yard TD catch and it was 35-0.
“We fumbled five or six times and we gave it to them four,” Kutztown coach Larry Chester said. “We gave it to them down here when we were marching. They can’t score if they don’t have the ball, and our offense is about that. It’s very methodical, very machine-like, so if we fumble the ball four times … I don’t care who we play. It doesn’t matter. It’s the most basic of basics of football.”
Without the fumbles, there’s every indication the Cougars could have stayed in it.
They ran 43 times for 289 yards, averaging 6.7 yards per carry.
Mason Sherry ran 12 times for 119 yards, including TD runs of 22 and 72 yards. Brenden Ackley ran 15 times for 105 yards. And Ethan Lafferty scored on a 45-yard run.
But ultimately, the night belonged to Harbach and the Panthers, who gave their coach a presentation that included balloons following the game.
“It’s amazing,” Nawrocki said. “He just knows football so well. It’s great.”
Harbach, in his third season at Schuylkill Valley, is 150-70 in 19 seasons as a head coach, the first 16 at Lancaster Catholic.
He led the Crusaders to two PIAA championships (2009, 2011), four District 3 titles and eight Lancaster-Lebanon Section 3 championships.
He is 11-15 with the Panthers.
“It means you’re getting old,” the 68-year-old Harbach said of win No. 150. “It means you’ve been in this business for a long time, 46 years. But I couldn’t ask for a better group to have the honor with. These kids, they just work their tails off. They responded with changing the culture of the program. The community has been great. So I’m thrilled to be part of it. So now I said, ‘We’ll go for 160.’ ”
