OK, everyone who thought the Lebanon Cedars football team would have six wins heading into the final regular-season game of the season raise your hands.
Players and coaches, you may put your hands down.
After going 0-10 last season, Lebanon figured to do better this year. But six wins better? With a great shot for No. 7 Friday night at home against 3-6 Elizabethtown? No way.
Some of this is due to fortunate scheduling. Lebanon has played only two games against teams with winning records, and those games did not go well. At all.
But you can only play the teams on your schedule and Lebanon has shown up and played well in the games it had a legitimate chance to win. Three of Lebanon’s six wins came by a total of seven points, all at home, and in two of them Lebanon trailed very late.
The first of those three narrow victories came in Week Two, after Northern Lebanon scored two touchdowns in the final six minutes of the fourth quarter to tie the game and then took a seven-point lead in overtime.
Needing a touchdown on a fourth-and-19 play in OT, Cedars quarterback Mark Pyles delivered a strike to Nicholas Negron in a corner of the end zone to bring Lebanon within one point. Lebanon was struggling mightily to kick extra points, so coach Gerry Yonchiuk opted to go for two.
Pyles fired a dart over the middle to a sliding Negron, giving the Cedars a memorable 40-39 win. Two weeks later, Lebanon held off Ephrata 44-42, and then last week the Cedars scored with nine seconds left in the fourth quarter to edge Lampeter-Strasburg 48-44.
At the time of that Northern Lebanon game, the Cedars were coming off a 16-point loss to Cedar Crest and dragging an 11-game losing streak. Had they not pulled out that game against the Vikings, what might have happened to Lebanon’s season?
We’ll never know that answer, thankfully. What did happen was Lebanon went to Elco the next week and posted an impressive win over the Raiders and then opened section play with a home win over Solanco. That winning streak gave the team a confidence that it has maintained to this day.
Now, Lebanon improbably finds itself on the cusp of district playoffs, holding a razor-thin edge over Mechanicsburg for the 16th and final spot in AAAA. Because Mechanicsburg has to play 8-1 Cedar Cliff, the Cedars look to be in great shape if they win. (A Mechanicsburg upset would likely enable the Wildcats to pass Lebanon in the power ratings, but let’s not worry about that.)
Since the start of district football playoffs in 1982, Lebanon has qualified exactly once, in 2008, and that resulted in a disappointing first-round home-field loss to Garden Spot when the Cedars were competing in AAA.
Now the Cedars are up with the biggest boys in AAAA, so if they qualify they would likely face undefeated (barring a monumental upset this week) Wilson, the perennial Berks County powerhouse, in the first round next week. Just qualifying for the playoffs would be a huge achievement for this Lebanon team.
Let’s just recognize that this year’s Lebanon team has put together a shockingly memorable season, led by Pyles, a terrific student likely bound for a Division I-AA college program next year, and a platoon of fleet receivers. They and their teammates have believed in themselves, even if no one else did.
Lebanon’s big home game Friday night is just one of the highlights of what is one of the biggest sports weeks of the year, locally and nationally.
Tonight, the NBA season opens. Tomorrow or Thursday, the World Series ends. High school football’s regular season wraps up this weekend and college football has several big games, including the battle of ACC unbeatens Miami at Florida State Saturday night.
Before that, Lebanon Valley has a huge game with Delaware Valley in Doylestown Saturday afternoon. LVC is tied with Lycoming and Widener at 5-1, a game ahead of Del Val and King’s. The Flying Dutchmen’s last two games are at home against 2-4 Stevenson on Nov. 9 and at 3-3 Albright on Nov. 16. Win out and the Dutchmen will have no worse than a share of the Centennial Conference title and a likely NCAA Division III playoff game because they would have the best overall record, 9-1.
And on a non-sports note, if you’re looking for dinner Saturday, please consider stopping by St. Mark’s United Church of Christ, 426 N. Eighth St., Lebanon, for spaghetti between 4 and 7 p.m. Tickets are $8 for anyone 11 and older and $4 for kids between 4 and 10. Proceeds benefit trust funds to assist families of two children with large medical bills.
As always, follow along on Twitter @sesnyderleb.