Gravine
DALLAS TWP. — Ben Gravine spent most of the night performing his usual duties of blocking and tackling.
With the game on the line in the fourth quarter, he was not about to let his one chance to catch the ball get away.
Gravine pulled in a 5-yard touchdown pass from his younger brother, Jack, for the game-winning score to complete a rally from 13 points down and lift Wyoming Area over host Dallas 27-20 Friday night in a non-league football game.
Wyoming Area scored the last 20 points in the meeting of two-time, defending Wyoming Valley Conference divisional champions.
The Warriors rallied into a tie in the third quarter, then scored the only points of the fourth quarter with the Gravine combination off of play-action on second-and-goal.
“I saw the ball in the air and time froze,” Ben Gravine, a junior tight end/linebacker said. “I saw only that ball. I didn’t hear anything.
“I knew I had to catch that ball and I did.”
The play was not the only contribution by the Gravines.
Ben Gravine was the leading tackler on a Wyoming Area defense that held Dallas without a first down on three of its last four possessions after the Mountaineers assumed a 20-7 lead early in the third quarter.
“We had to be physical; we had to be fast; we had to make the right reads and we had to lock it in,” he said.
Jack Gravine was 4-for-5 passing for 106 yards and two touchdowns during the second-half comeback. He also had an 11-yard run during the winning drive.
Dallas put Wyoming Area in a hole to begin each half.
Hunter Pitcavage hit Jack Gravine before he could throw on the game’s second play and Jim Gibbons picked the fumble out of the air.
Pitcavage ran 17 yards around right end for a touchdown on the next play and the Mountaineers were in front after just 49 seconds.
Wyoming Area took a 7-6 lead when Luke Kopetchny got behind the defense on a post pattern and pulled in a Jack Gravine pass for a 46-yard touchdown with 4:22 left in the first quarter.
Dallas regained the lead on the final play of the first quarter with its own brother passing combination. Logan Geskey took a short pass from Talan Geskey and went 62 yards for the score and 13-7 advantage.
The Mountaineers added a score six plays and 1:35 into the second half. One play after Talan Geskey found Tyce Mason for 37 yards, Pitcavage scored from the 3.
The Warriors started at the 20 following a touchback for the third time in the game and found themselves facing third-and-six.
Josh Mruk’s spinning, back-pedaling catch on the sideline in front of the Dallas bench for 26 yards got Wyoming Area to midfield and started the comeback.
Gravine lofted the ball over a defender on a deep fade and Kopetchny went up and got it for a 30-yard touchdown.
Facing second-and-15 from its 15, Wyoming Area covered 85 yards in two plays to force the tie. Mruk got open deep and Jack Gravine found him for 45 yards.
Nick Ciampi burst through the middle on the next play for a 40-yard touchdown with 5:06 left in the third quarter.
The winning drive started on the last two plays of the third quarter.
Wyoming Area went 68 yards on nine straight runs, then the play-action that those runs set up. Ben Gravine released into the end zone on the left side with plenty of room to make his catch on a drive that featured runs of 14 and nine yards by Josh Mruk and 11 yards each by Ciampi and Jack Gravine.
After Kopetchny, Chase Krogulski and Drew Keating made plays to stop a Dallas drive that had reached the 6, Trustin Johnson did his part in the ground game.
Johnson helped kill the final 4:57 with runs of 19, 11 and 12 yards in the final drive.
“It’s certainly important to share the work,” Wyoming Area coach Randy Spencer said. “It was great efforts from different guys at different times stepping up. Between Josh Mruk and Trustin Johnson finishing strong and you saw what Nick Ciampi gave us there.
“We have all those guys complementing each other, working together. It’s great to be able to go to those different options at different times in the game. That workload in a highly competitive game, it’s hard for one guy to manage.”
By the numbers
Statistics were drastically different in the time Dallas built a 20-7 lead in the first 25½ minutes and the 20½ minutes Wyoming Area set itself up to go into Victory Formation on the team’s final three plays. Dallas led 20-7 on the scoreboard and had statistical advantages of 107-37 in rushing yards, 214-117 in passing yards and 7-6 in first downs in the first 25½ minutes. Wyoming Area outscored Dallas 20-0 with the help of statistical leads of 14-3 in first downs, 175-21 in rushing yards and 281-45 in total offense over the next 20½ minutes. … Jack Gravine finished 9-for-16 passing for 186 yards and three touchdowns with five catches for 100 yards and two touchdowns going to Luke Kopetchny. Josh Mruk’s two catches were good for 71 yards. … Trustin Johnson finished with 87 yards on 17 carries while Nick Ciampi had 79 yards and a touchdown on 10 carries. … Ben Gravine led the Wyoming Area defense with nine tackles, two assists and a broken-up pass. Donovan Miller added five tackles (one for a loss), two assists and a pass rush.
Up next
Wyoming Area hosts Western Wayne, a team that it split with a year ago. The Wildcats handed the Warriors their only regular-season loss, but Wyoming Area avenged that with a 36-35, double-overtime victory in the District 2 Class 3A semifinals on the last of Lidge Kellum’s five touchdowns and a two-point conversion stop. … The Wildcats are 1-1 after a season-opening, 32-0 victory over Susquehanna and a 35-3 loss to Lackawanna Trail in a meeting of defending Lackawanna Football Conference division champions.
