Lou Cerro has been coaching high school football for almost 30 years, including the past 18 at Montour — but he’s never experienced an ending quite like what went down on the Spartans’ home field last Friday.
Facing Hampton in a first-round WPIAL Class 4A playoff matchup, Montour got the ball back at its own 1-yard line while trailing, 33-28, with a little more than a minute remaining. Backup quarterback Trey Hopper led the team all the way down to the 28-yard line, then third-string QB Kaleb Platz entered the game with five seconds left after a penalty moved the ball to the 23. Platz then heaved a 23-yard touchdown as time expired to James Bundridge, who snatched the ball away from a defender in midair before fighting his way across the goal line as he came down with it.
Ballgame.
“The ball wasn’t very good. It was a little bit of a duck,” Platz said. “I was a little worried I didn’t get it there enough. I was just hoping he was in the end zone. The ref put his hands up, and I was just in shock.
“I was hugging my center, Calan Schrenker. Just super happy. He started crying, and we both started crying.”
Cerro said the astonishing sequence of events is being dubbed “The Drive,” akin to John Elway’s legendary 98-yard go-ahead scoring drive vs. the Cleveland Browns in the 1987 AFC Championship Game — only this one was 1 yard farther. And it was engineered by a pair of backup quarterbacks rather than an inner-circle Hall of Famer known for his late-game heroics.
Maybe this was more like the “Montour Miracle.”
“I was just trying to find someone to hug,” Cerro said. “My whole team ran to the end zone, and I think parents got on the field fast, too. We had some of our parents in the end zone. I was still stunned. I was trying to figure out what the heck just happened.”
Bundridge, a 6-foot sophomore receiver who had 21 catches for 273 yards during the regular season, said the experience was like something out of a movie. As soon as he scored, his teammates immediately mobbed him in the end zone as fans rushed onto the field to join the celebration.
“I remember trying to get up, and then one of my teammates pushed me down and then in a split second, my whole team was on me,” Bundridge said. “Me and Kaleb are going to remember this for probably the rest of our lives.”
Platz is listed as a tight end on the team’s roster, but this wasn’t his first rodeo under center. The 6-2 sophomore completed 4 of 9 passes for 88 yards with two touchdowns and one interception in the regular season, and he was ready when Cerro called his number after Hopper led the team down the field.
“I told coach [Cerro] I wanted to send [Daniel] Batch on a post, and the rest, all go’s,” Platz said. “I saw they were double-teaming [Batch] with the safety in the middle of the field taking him away, and I know James is a pretty good jump ball player. I trusted him out there.”
The play wasn’t something the Spartans had gone over in practice. Instead, Platz and Cerro came up with the play structure on the fly as the team huddled during the timeout.
“We didn’t really know what was going to happen,” Bundridge said. “We had to think of something on the fly. We knew Daniel was probably going to be double covered. We knew it was either going to me or A.J. [Alston].”
As the entire Montour sideline swarmed Bundridge in the end zone to celebrate, the Hampton defender who had been battling with Bundridge on the play emerged from the bottom of the pile with the football, but it didn’t matter at that point. The referee had rightly signaled touchdown, and the party was already on.
“It all still kind of feels like a dream,” Bundridge said. “I can’t really believe it. It was just a movie-like scene.”
Elsewhere on Friday night, in arguably the most anticipated matchup of the opening round, Upper St. Clair used its own improbable touchdown pass late in the fourth quarter to knock off host Gateway in a thrilling 24-21 win.
Sophomore quarterback Julian Dahlem hooked up with senior wide receiver Aidan Besselman for a go-ahead 26-yard TD pass on fourth-and-11 with 2:22 remaining and the Panthers trailing, 21-16. And although it wasn’t truly a Hail Mary in the sense that Montour’s was, the scene was equally dramatic as Besselman caught the game-winning score to add another signature highlight to a career filled with them.
“One of the things is, those two kids are tremendous athletes. So if things do break down, you have guys who can create something positive,” said Upper St. Clair coach Mike Junko. “In a lot of ways, that’s what they did.”
Last year, Besselman leaped over a few South Fayette defenders to catch a 25-yard touchdown on the final play of regulation, sending the game to overtime in a game the Panthers would eventually win, 31-28. The play even made it on the “You Got Mossed” segment on ESPN’s NFL Countdown.
“We get into those situations, and he always seems to be the guy who makes a play for us,” Junko said. “I know that he took a moment to kind of take it in before that last play, because that’s pretty much your senior season on the line. He stayed very much in the moment and made a big play when we needed it most.
“In those moments, you kind of think, ‘That’s one in a lifetime.’ But he’s had a few once-in-a-lifetime catches.”
For Junko, the thinking behind the fourth-down play call on Friday was simple — get his players in a position to do what they do best. That meant scheming for a QB rollout to get Dahlem outside the pocket — where he is most dangerous with both his arm and his legs — and it meant giving Besselman a chance to make a play on a jump ball.
Both players did their jobs to perfection — and the rest is history.
“It was just a dream come true,” Dahlem said. “It still feels like a dream.”
Steve is a sports writer at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, but he's currently on strike. Email him at srotstein@unionprogress.com.
