HERSHEY – The most successful athletes usually get it.
The most intense competitors certainly do.
They never stop.
Improbable comebacks from significant margins with time wasting away don’t happen often.
But, the best keep trying, just in case.
No matter how bleak a picture the score, the events up to that moment in a given game and the current outlook may paint, they do not give up the fight.
As the fourth quarter opened in the Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic Association Class 3A football championship game at Hersheypark Stadium the afternoon of Dec. 7, all those indicators pointed to a runner-up finish on the state level as the outcome of the Wyoming Area football season.
There was little credible reason to believe a Wyoming Area comeback was on the horizon.
Then, the player everyone was watching and the one nobody saw coming combined to change the fate of the Warriors season.
Dominic DeLuca was hobbling and well-contained for one of the few times all year. A play earlier, he had merely chucked the ball away for an incompletion, aware he was not going to be able to avoid a pass rush any longer and scramble into anything positive.
On third-and-eight with his team down two touchdowns and a punt seeming imminent, however, DeLuca avoided the sack. He stepped out of one tackle and away from another and, without time to set his feet and throw one of his stronger passes, he sent the ball down field toward Derek Ambrosino – just in case, he could make something happen.
DeLuca, the leader, was not about to stop trying after a season in which he often ran the ball, passed the ball, returned kicks, made tackles, broke up or intercepted passes and boomed punts, all in the same game and especially when his team needed him most.
Players like DeLuca deservedly get much of the attention.
Fortunately, for the Warriors, championship teams also include players like Riley Rusyn.
Rusyn had worked his way toward his senior year by filling roles where needed, including as an undersized blocker more often than as a pass catcher from his wide receiver position.
When DeLuca’s off-balance pass hung in the air dangerously long, Rusyn never stopped hustling.
The pass did not make it to Ambrosino, who likely would have caught it, but only for a first down when the Warriors needed more.
Rusyn raced across the field, stepped in front of his teammate and caught the ball in full stride with his momentum carrying him in a different direction than every other significant player still in pursuit of first the ball, then him.
The momentum of Rusyn’s sprint carried him all the way to the end zone in a close race he won for an 80-yard touchdown.
And, just like that — in one unlikely play, the momentum of a state championship game changed.
That player who everyone knew to keep an eye on and the other who nobody saw until the ball was in his hands brought out the capability the Warriors possessed all along.
For almost 37 minutes, particularly through the end of the first half and the third quarter when the Central Valley line seemed to take control, Wyoming Area was just slightly overmatched in every phase of the game. That added up to a 14-0 deficit and made losing by shutout seem more likely than winning in any way.
For the 11 minutes that remained, Central Valley was absolutely no match for Wyoming Area.
Wyoming Area stuffed Central Valley’s fourth-down plays with an unbending defense. It turned its own fourth-down play into an innovative call that allowed the DeLuca-to-Ambrosino connection to click on the tying touchdown. And, it produced a game- and championship-winning drive that appropriately put DeLuca in the end zone with the decisive points.
Before the play that changed everything, Central Valley led 10-7 in first downs, 146-39 in rushing yards and 190-93 in total offense.
Beginning with the DeLuca-to-Rusyn connection, Wyoming Area led 4-3 in first downs, 19-8 in rushing yards, 155-49 in passing yards and 174-57 in total offense.
DeLuca, Rusyn and their teammates kept searching for a play that would change everything. They found it and, with it, they became the first state team champions in school history and the first state football champions from District 2 since 1997.
They never stopped until they found a away to come home with the most sought-after trophy in Pennsylvania high school sports.
