Football: Marple Newtown defeats Strath Haven for head coach’s first win

By Paul Vanderveer

Football fans have become used to the sight of coaches receiving a “Gatorade shower” when a team has captured a championship or some other significant victory.

Still, it is uncommon to see such a treatment being administered on a Friday night in early September.

But for the Marple Newtown Tigers, last week’s 22-14 triumph over Strath Haven represented more than just an important Central League victory. For, as the final seconds ticked off the clock at Haven’s George L. King Field, Marple had earned the first win that Chris Gicking would experience as the new head coach of the Tigers.

Afterwards, a dripping Gicking was more than willing to give the credit to his players, who had persevered to come from behind on the uncomfortably humid night.

“All the hard work these guys have done this summer paid off in the second half,” Gicking said.

His crew had indeed labored mightily down the stretch in this one, but any witness would say that there was one member of the cast who stood out just a bit. That would be running back Adrian Sapnas, who toted the ball 36 times to amass a total of 257 rushing yards. Those numbers are a bit more amazing when it is understood that the Tigers’ team offense for the game was 266 yards.

“Adrian is a special running back,” Gicking remarked.

It’s not that the Haven defense was altogether porous. On some of those carries, the Panther defenders seemed to have Sapnas bottled up – only to see him weave his way through traffic, or emerge from a pile of bodies to sprint to the open field. The first bolt of lightning produced by Sapnas came about on Marple’s first possession of the contest. Following the right side of his line, he seemed to be submerged a wave of Haven tacklers. But he suddenly appeared on the back side of the scrum to dash 51 yards to the end zone to record the first touchdown of the game.

Impressive as that momentary feat was, it was the fourth quarter heroics which stamped Sapnas as a clutch, iron man performer. He and his mates had just watched Haven take the lead at 14-10 thanks to a methodical eight minute drive. Marple needed to respond, or perhaps have to wait another week to claim their first win of the season.

“When they (Haven) went ahead, you could tell a couple guys on our side were down,” Sapnas said.

In trouble, the Tigers turned to Sapnas.

Taking the ball on their 20-yard line, Marple staged a seven minute drive of its own to regain the lead for good. Sapnas carried the ball on twelve of the fifteen snaps, and finished things off with a three-yard touchdown burst. But the truly critical play of the night occurred earlier in the march, when Marple faced a fourth down and four yards to go at midfield. Nine minutes still remained to be played, and conventional strategy would have dictated a punt in that situation.

However, both Gicking and Sapnas agreed that it didn’t take much thought for the Tigers to buck accepted wisdom in this instance.

“Strath Haven had just driven the ball down field against us,” Gicking said. “If we gave the ball back to them there, they might have done so again and run out most of the clock. We knew we would go on fourth down there.”

“I think the coaches thought about it a little bit,” said Sapnas. “But we didn’t want to give the ball right back to them.”

In the moment of peril, the Tigers didn’t pull anything fancy out of the playbook. The ball was handed to Sapnas, who squeezed out the required yardage by a foot or so.

“Our line got a great push on that play,” said tackle Kyle Kelly.

Even after Sapnas tallied, the Panthers were only down by a 16-14 count with five minutes still to play. But Marple’s defense refused to yield a first down, and Sapnas was soon to score on a ten-yard jaunt with just over a minute left to more or less seal the win.

“We were down, but we knew we could win in the end,” Sapnas said.

“I felt dehydrated at halftime,” he added. “But my team needed me to be out there.”

Click here to read the remainder of the article. http://www.delconewsnetwork.com/articles/2014/09/12/sports/doc54109b72c21e1856651699.txt?viewmode=fullstory