Cheltenham gives Gore first win by running past Norristown
CHELTENHAM >> A night that started with an energetic run onto the field ended with a few backflips, a fair bit of dancing and one long-awaited Gatorade bath.
Cheltenham had played anything but an easy schedule to start the season and it resulted in an 0-3 start for the Panthers and first-year coach Troy Gore. With a new staff that had only come onto the job a few months prior, it would have been easy for the team to splinter, but the Panthers only rallied and wanted to prove who they really were while also showing off a bit.
An extremely energized Cheltenham got Gore his first win with a 33-0 victory over visiting Norristown, denying the Eagles their first win of the season.
“Football is the game, coaching is the business and that business is to keep your young men motivated,” Gore said. “At 0-3, it’s how do you keep them motivated and also keep pushing the academics. That’s the business of it and that’s what we’re trying to do.”
Ironically, for all the energy pregame, things started out slowly on the field. Norristown had the first real scoring threat of the game, when quarterback Robert Miller hit a deep ball to Nate Robinson down the left sideline on a third down that put the Eagles (0-4) on the Panthers’ 30 before a flag on the home side moved Norristown 15 yards closer.
Cheltenham’s defensive line, which created havoc all night and generated four sacks behind senior ends Matt Hoffman and Mike Slowe plus hard-charging tackle Naheem Williams, came up with two tackles for loss to force a throw on third down. This pass was also completed, but to the wrong colored jersey as Cheltenham senior safety Kamden Wyatt won a jumpball in the end zone for the interception and a game-changing play.
“This is amazing, I’m not even going to lie, losing our first three games but coming out tonight, forgetting all that and getting a win, it’s amazing,” Wyatt, who ended up with two interceptions, said. “You can see it’s different. There’s so much energy, everybody’s lit, it’s like a different time zone right now. Tonight was that night. We lost our last home game so we had to win this one and set the season right.”
It was an all-too familiar scene for Norristown coach Joe Milligan, who has seen his squad catch more than its share of bad breaks early this season.
“We took a shot there and ended up shooting ourselves in the foot,” Milligan said. “There’s a lot of combinations of things that we’ve had to fight through with this thing but the main thing is, we have to win some games. We’re right there.”
Cheltenham didn’t get on the board until early in the second quarter, but there was no looking back from there. Zaheim Salahuddin powered in on a 31-yard run for the Panthers’ first score and the first in a round-table display of the numerous weapons on the roster.
Salahuddin rushed for 64 yards and a score, Jordan Lilly carried for 83 yards and a TD on just four touches and Jamal Banks had 82 yards and a score to lead Cheltenham’s stable of runners. Sophomore Zaire Williams, all 5-foot-8 and 160 pounds of him, laid out some punishing blocks and caught five balls for 66 yards and junior quarterback TJ Taylor accounted for 113 yards and two scores.
“In the locker room, Coach Gore told us ‘this is the game,’ we had to come and get ours,” Lilly said. “We need to stay humble all the time, even if you’re winning, stay humble because you never know what they have on the other side. We just needed to keep balling, keep hitting hard, hit the holes hard and if we did, we would win the game.”
Despite the final score, the Eagles defense held its own for much of the night before starting to wear down in the final quarter. A special teams error would haunt Norristown late in the second quarter, further putting the visitors behind going into the break. After a bad snap led to an errant punt, the Eagles ended up giving Cheltenham a short field.
Two plays later, Williams took a screen pass and slalomed his way through the defense for a 24-yard touchdown and 13-0 Panthers lead.
“We have to put points on the board, I think in our past three games we’ve only scored 15 points and you can’t win games like that,” Milligan said. “We punt that away, at least we have some field to work with and can do something different. You have to be sound in all three aspects and right now we’re not.
“We have to get a win to keep the hope.”
Williams made a gorgeous catch on a deep ball from Taylor to open the third quarter, setting up an eventual score where Hoffman caught a tipped ball at the goal line for a 16-yard score. Cheltenham broke the game open with a pair of rushing scores in the fourth, with Lilly breaking off a 54-yard run before Banks drove in from 25 out about three minutes of game clock later.
Gore deflected much of the credit to his players, especially the seniors who stuck with his staff when they came in over the summer, and his assistant coaches. Lilly said it was the entire coaching staff and their constant belief in what the team could be that kept them together through the 0-3 start but also added they keep each player accountable for their academic work as well.
“They push us every day, in the weight room, on the field and even in the classroom,” Lilly said. “Every Wednesday, we have to turn in our work and check in and if we don’t, they grill us in our group chats. They’re very supportive but they also continue to push us.”
“It’s a tribute to the great staff I have, I’m just the guy to point the fingers and they’re the ones who really do the work,” Gore said. “They’ve spent a lot of time teaching the sport, teaching technique and this game is a result of all that.”
Both squads will move on to conference play, with Norristown entering PAC play while Cheltenham will open SOL competition against undefeated Upper Moreland. Wyatt and Lilly were confident the Panthers haven’t come close to showing their best.
“The first three games, we weren’t really a team yet,” Wyatt said. “The coaches built us into a team. Now we have the momentum, the energy, everybody’s connecting and we’re going to see where it takes us.”
CHELTENHAM 0 13 6 14 – 33
NORRISTOWN 0 0 0 0 – 0
Scoring Plays
2nd Quarter
C – Zaheim Salahuddin 31 run (Joshua Grady kick) 9:52
C – TJ Taylor 24 pass to Zaire Williams (kick fail) 2:28
3rd Quarter
C -Taylor 16 pass to Matt Hoffman (two-point fail) 10:00
4th Quarter
C – Jordan Lilly 54 run (Grady kick) 10:00
C – Jamal Banks 25 run (Grady kick) 8:45
Team Stats
C N
First Downs 13 6
Rushing 24-235 23-(-3)
Passing 9-17-2-1 9-25-0-2
Passing yards 113 94
Total yards 348 91
Fumbles-Lost 1-0 1-1
Penalties-yards 8-87 3-35
Individual stats
Rushing: C – Jamal Banks 11-82, Zaheim Salahuddin 6-64, Zaire Williams 1-1, Jordan Lilly4-83, TJ Taylor 1-(-10), Sean Hill 1-5; N – Marzon Carr 8-10, Robert Miller 4-(-15), Adam Moffitt 4-(-10), Rashad Tripplett Jr 2-3, Nikosh Narston 5-9
Passing: C – TJ Taylor 9-17-2-1-113; N – Miller 9-24-0-1-94, John Dinolfi 0-1-0-1-0
Receiving: Banks 1-(-6), Williams 5-66, Donovan Agyare 1-22, Matt Hoffman 1-16, Lilly 1-15; N – Mekhi Green 2-5, Nate Robinson 4-65, Bocar Dieng, Meyon Ferrell 1-20, Moffitt 1-10
Interceptions: C – Kamden Wyatt 2, N – Martice Williams
