Football: Penncrest’s backfield Matts lead to opening win over Sun Valley

ASTON — The fall television season might get off to a late start because the scriptwriters are on strike. But Penncrest’s 2023 football season got off to a great start at Sun Valley’s Dr. Wally Field Friday night.

Senior backs Matt Malley and Matt Ferry helped write a success story that ended with the Lions claiming a 34-19 nonleague decision over the Vanguards.

Malley gained 125 yards on 19 carries and scored one touchdown while Ferry had 108 yards rushing on 21 carries, ran for one score and tossed a 31-yard TD pass to junior Asher Wynne.

The running game accounted for 292 of the Lions’ 366 yards of total offense.

“Obviously the running game is our strength with the many options we have,” Penncrest head coach Paul Graham said. “Malley and Ferry ran well, and (quarterback Nico) Tozzi got things going and scored a touchdown. At one point we had a back (sophomore Jeff Cropper) who had one carry for one touchdown (11 yards).

“Last year, we had some tough losses, but that taught us about the things we knew we had to build on. Now after this one we will see what we have to do to get better.”

After the Penncrest defense shut Sun Valley down on its opening drive, the Lions put together a 14-play, 80-yard drive for their first score, which came on a 10-yard Tozzi run 1:41 left before the end of the first quarter. Junior Zach Mullin kept the march from faltering with a 23-yard fourth-down completion to junior Kolby Poole one play before Tozzi’s TD run.

Sun Valley went three-and-out on its next two offensive tries. After the second, the Lions needed only six running plays to gobble up 72 yards and reach the end zone again, with Cropper getting his six points on his dash behind Wynne’s lead block.

Five minutes later, following another Sun Valley three-and-out, Malley broke tackles on a 28-yard run before Ferry ran 20 yards to score 1:15 before halftime.

“The guys on our line were putting things together,” said Malley, giving credit to blockers Eli Perilli, Noah Reed, Dan Le, Ben Kauffman and Tristan Blair. “(Sun Valley) was trying to blitz us, but (the linemen) picked things up and pushed them back.”

Malley, a transfer from Archbishop Ryan, is happy to be at Penncrest.

“A lot of us are in our senior year, and we really want to flip the script as far as Penncrest football is concerned,” Ferry said.

Noah Griffin (12 carries, 108 yards) gave the home fans something to cheer about with a 55-yard scoring run seven seconds before the second quarter came to a close for Sun Valley.

Griffin added a 20-yard run to set up sophomore quarterback RJ Scharrer’s short TD run early in the third quarter as Sun Valley drew close. But Penncrest answered with a nine-play drive that was topped off by a Ferry’s 31-yard scoring pass to Wynne.

“It’s our pitch-option play,” said Ferry, who took a toss from Tozzi and did enough to draw in the defenders before putting the ball in the air. “They came up and I got the ball to (Wynne).”

A Penncrest lost fumble was followed one play later by a touchdown pass from Scharrer to a wide-open Griffin. Shortly after the Sun Valley band played “The Lion Sleeps Tonight,” the visiting Lions had another long scoring drive, with 12 plays all on the ground capped by Ferry going over from one yard out.

“We’re not going to give up in any game we play this year,” Ferry said. “Last year they were running off our field all excited when they beat us. We were determined that we weren’t going to let them run off the field all happy again this year.”

Sun Valley’s Ernie Ellis was disappointed that his third season as head coach began the way it did.

“We just seemed to come out flat,” he said. “But we’re not going to let one game define our season. We talked about everyone going home and looking in the mirror and thinking about what has to be done as we move on.”