No matter what happens around the country over the next month, Friday night's WPIAL AAAA Championship game may go down as the best finish to a championship high school football games this year.
With less than 90 seconds to play, and Pittsburgh Central Catholic leading Gateway 21-13 PCC defensive back Emmanuele Matthews picked off a pass and returned it 85-yards for a Viking touchdown and a 28-13 lead with 62 seconds to play. But 62 seconds was all Gateway needed to send the game to overtime.
First the Gators scored on an 8-yard touchdown pass from Rob Kalkstein to close the gap to 28-20 with 31 seconds left. Then the Gators recovered an on-side kick. The comeback was completed when Gateway dug into its bag of tricks using a Kalkstein pass to Jonanthan Pryor to the 12 and just before Pryor was tackled he lateraled the ball to Cam Sadler who ran into the end zone with just one second left. The two point conversion sent the game into overtime.
Gateway scored first in OT, but missed the extra point and that was all Pittsburgh Central Catholic needed to win its third WPIAL title in five years. PCC won 35-34 on a made extra point.
Pittsburgh Central Catholic, which is ranked #15 by USA Today, is now 13-0 and advances to the Pennsylvania state quarterfinals. Gateway began the season ranked by USA Today, but lost its opener to another nationally-ranked team, Cardinal Mooney, in the Ohio vs. USA Challenge.
To read more about the game, click here.
To watch video of the exciting finish, click here.
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