Leading off today: Are you familiar with that deal where a team's cheerleaders do pushups after each score to match the number of points their team has on the scoreboard?
Well, you would not have wanted to try that Saturday in Binghamton, site of the Section 4 Class D football championship game -- or else you ran the risk of eventually looking more chiseled than East German female swimmers circa 1976.
Let's put it this way: Unatego sophomore Josh Feyerabend went 29-for-40 for 581 yards (a state record) and seven touchdowns ... and his team got smoked.
Final score: Second-ranked Tioga 80, No. 9 Unatego 53.
Highlighting the Tigers' third straight championship was a 43-point second quarter. Tioga rushed for 622 yards despite sendings its two top backs to the bench for the day with a 59-12 lead at halftime. Sophomore Jesse Manuel ran 16 times for 217 yards and four touchdowns, and Brad Jump added 11 carries for 80 yards. Manuel has 1,852 yards in nine games this season.
Manuel opened the onslaught with scoring runs of 6, 13 and 3 yards as the Tigers tallied on their first seven possessions. Tioga recovered one onside kick and two other low line drives that bounced off of Unatego upbacks.
“I wasn’t looking to send a message but it just happened to get up there," Tigers coach Nick Aiello said of the 80-point day. "We were looking to play guys in the second half and they were keeping their first-team offense in against my third-string defense and they kept scoring, so we kept trying to move the ball just to kill the clock.”
Feyerabend's yardage total marked the sixth time is state history -- all since 2003 -- a quarterback threw for 500 yards in a game. He broke the record of Greg Paulus, who threw for 543 yards for Syracuse CBA in 2003 vs. Auburn. Feyerabend was 12-for-14 for 356 yards in the second half, largely against Tioga's reserves.
Another monster effort: If not for the Tioga-Unatego track meet, Matt Przybocki would have been the talk of New York football this weekend. The Burke Catholic running back carried 40 times for 453 yards and all six of his team's TDs.
The last came on a 20-yard rush to start overtime, and No. 12 Burke defeated No. 19 James I. O'Neil 48-40 for the Section 9 Class C championship.
Przybocki ran for three two-point conversions, passed for two others and hauled down an interception in the fourth quarter to lead the Eagles to their first sectional crown since 2005.
"He's a special player," Burke coach Ed Van Curen Jr. said. "We saw Matt starting to click the past two weeks in practice and we saw a side of him starting to come out that we hadn't seen before. He played like a warrior today."
Przybocki's short TD run two plays after the interception plus a successful conversion pass put Burke ahead 40-33, but O'Neill's Keegan West (285 yards, five TD passes) threw on a 90-yard touchdown pass to Geoffrey Stoker to tie with 2:33 left.
Class A shake-up: Both of last year's finalists, regulars at the Carrier Dome in recent years, saw their seasons end this weekend a game short of returning to the New York State Public High School Athletic Association tournament.
Sweet Home, ranked No. 1 in the state by the NYSSWA, saw its winning streak against Section 6 competition end at 69 games with a 21-12 setback Friday to Williamsville North, a three-loss team ranked 20th this week.
Williamsville North scored two first-quarter TDs and was up 21-0 at the half at Ralph Wilson Stadium, outgaining Sweet Home 181-40.
"We didn’t think this was an upset," said senior Derick Isler, who ran 20 times for 99 yards and a touchdown and had two interceptions on defense. "We came here and we proved ourselves tonight."
