Beechwood’s sophomore RB knows football can be either won or lost by the slightest of margins
Can’t say enough about the job Chase Flaherty did this year for the newly re-crowned Beechwood Tigers after Mitchell Berger being lost to injury. Programs like Beechwood ‘reload,’ not ‘rebuild.’ Of course, Beechwood have one of the commonwealth’s premier offensive fronts doesn’t hurt the reloading process any.
Fletcher Long, Chief of the Scouting Division, KPGFootball
In the end it was a PAT sailing just inches wide of a narrowed goal post which secured for Beechwood its 17th-overall football championship, by a 14-13 sliver of a margin, over long-time arch-nemesis, Mayfield High. You see, high school goal posts are 23-feet, four-inches apart. In the college game usually played on Kroger Field, the expanse between the two posts are just 18-feet, six-inches.
That may not seem a great difference. You aren’t a high school place-kicker aligning a PAT which, if true, would knot the score in a state championship football game (in all fairness).
The difference seemed worlds apart to the high school kickers who played this weekend on Kroger Field. It seemed so to them anyway, judging by the efforts and the results.
In the Beechwood/Mayfield game (a PAT) was “win/lose,” “life/death,” the latter in the figurative and not literal sense
HB Lyon, Senior Sports Writer, KPGFootball
In the Beechwood/Mayfield tilt, it was the final margin. In the Beechwood/Mayfield game it was “win/lose,” “life/death,” the latter in the figurative and not literal sense.
That shouldn’t diminish the fine outing sophomore RB, Chase Flaherty (’25), turned in for the Tigers. You remember him. He was the running back pressed into action when Beechwood’s “Mr. Football” candidate, Mitchell Berger, fell to injury.
Flaherty got injured in the Mayfield game this past weekend, leaving the championship game late to not return. However, he didn’t leave the field before rushing for 115-yards on 23-carries.
Flaherty’s counterpart, Jutarius Starks (Mayfield, ’24, RB) was equally solid, if not stelar. Starks logged 22-rushes for 104-yards and a TD.
In a game of inches, in a one-point margin, every yard counted. When it came to converting the second PAT which would have knotted the score at 14’s, every inch counted, including the ones sailing wide of the college goal post.
Beechwood has won its last four titles by a combined five points. They keep coming out on the plus side of those tight margins, because they are Beechwood, because they fully understand championship football is often a game of inches.
This is Coach HB Lyon, reporting for KPGFootball, and we’re JUST CALLING IT LIKE WE SEE IT!
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