CALN — When the moment is its biggest, Coatesville’s Jordan Young has performed his best.
On Coatesville’s final drive, with an undefeated season hanging in the balance down a point to visiting Downingtown West, Young completed first-down passes on third-and-17, fourth-and-four and fourth-and-16 to cap a 47-33 win, Friday.
Young ran for two first-half touchdowns and passed for a career-high 371 yards and two more scores. The last of his 21 completions was his biggest, a 28-yarder to Jay Stocker for the go-ahead touchdown with 47 seconds in the game.
Downingtown West (3-3, 6-4) still clinched a spot in the District 1 Class AAAA playoffs next week. Young helped Coatesville (6-0, 10-0) to its first undefeated regular season since 2004 and sent the Red Raiders into the postseason as the No. 1 seed in a game that will only add to the lore of the Coatesville-Downingtown rivalry.
“(Young) went from a boy to a man tonight,’ Coatesville coach Matt Ortega said. “He’s a special player.’
Coatesville is unofficially slated to host No. 16 Haverford next Friday. It may take a day or two for the Red Raiders to recover from a game that saw eight lead changes and a back-and-forth second half for the ages.
West led Coatesville 14-12 at half thanks to a pair of scores by Jake Barr. Coatesville forced a three-and-out to open the second half and used a short field for a two-play TD drive, capped by Jalen Hudson’s five-yard run.
The Whippets answered right back with a 78-yard drive, finished by Mike Riddick’s one-yard plunge.
After swapping punts, Coatesville reclaimed the lead when Young found James Clark for a five-yard TD.
“(Young) keeps things alive and he does a really good job at what he does,’ West coach Mike Milano said.
West missed a field goal that would have cut the deficit to two, but Wayne Anderson was able to intercept Young on the next drive to set up Riddick’s second touchdown.
Down a point, Coatesville went 65-yards in four plays and hopped back on top when Hudson cashed in from six yards out. West scored two plays later on a 45-yard run by Riddick, who broke three tackles along the way to put the Whippets up 33-32 with 4:16 to play.
After a sack, Young hit Keenan Coleman for 17 yards on third-and-17. Four plays later he found Amir Ealey for 18 on fourth-and-four. Two incompletions, a yard-loss and a false start set up fourth-and-16, but Young found Ealey once again, this time for 23 yards.
The next play, Stocker broke open on a post pattern and caught a perfect pass from Young to send the home stands into a Halloween frenzy.
“We’ve been in that situation before, this year,’ Young said. “Against Downingtown East we had a couple fourth-downs we completed. We knew how to execute.’
“To be 10-0, for the first time in 10 years, we made our way into Coatesville history,’ Young added. “It’s awesome.’
Coatesville got a pair of sacks from Ealey along the way, and put a cherry on top when Ahkeema Evans took a tipped interception to the house for the final score.
“It’s unbelievable,’ Ortega said. “I’m so proud how we battled each other and kept making plays. We’ll go down in history so I’m excited about that.’
West was able to sneak into the playoffs thanks to losses by Ridley and Harry S. Truman. They’ll likely head to Pennsbury as the No. 15 seed, despite two straight losses to end the season.
“We deserve the chance to play again,’ Milano said. “We played one bad game all year. Downingtown East played a great game and we didn’t play very well. We played a great game (Friday night) and we deserve a chance to play again.’
