Nov 1, 2019 4 min read

ROGERSVILLE – The last time West Greene won a football playoff game was all the way back in 1993, when the team made it to the WPIAL championship game.

Since then, the Pioneers hadn’t made it past the first round of the WPIAL playoffs. Each of the past two seasons, West Greene qualified for postseason play but were trounced by Rochester.

That 25-year winless playoff drought came to an end Friday evening as Kolin Walker, Ben Jackson and the Pioneer defense dominated Greensburg Central Catholic from start to finish, rolling to a 36-0 victory to advance to the Class A semifinals.

“It feels outstanding, just because the kids have been knocking on the door for the previous two years – they had a long drought there for a while. But this group of kids – they’ve just been so determined that they weren’t going to walk out of here with a loss tonight,” said West Greene head coach Brian Hanson. “I’m really proud of them.”

Record-breaking running back Ben Jackson usually gets all the attention for West Greene (10-1), but for a majority of the first-half it was Kolin Walker stealing the show. Walker opened the scoring with a seven-yard touchdown run with 4:32 to go in the first quarter. Then, on the Centurions’ (7-4) ensuing drive, Walker sacked quarterback David Altimore, forcing a fumble that Jackson scooped and returned 14 yards for a touchdown.

Then, just two plays after GCC got the ball back, it fumbled again, this time to Austin Crouse, who returned the ball 44 yards to the end zone to extend the lead to 21-0 with 27 seconds left in the first quarter.

Walker added his second rushing touchdown late in the first half, scoring from 12 yards to make it 28-0. By the time the teams went to the locker room, Jackson had accumulated 122 yards on 14 carries, while Walker carried the ball eight times for 72 yards and both offensive touchdowns.

“Come playoff time, I think we have to be balanced in terms of our rushing attack because it makes us much harder to beat when you have to worry about – like a two-headed snake – both of them,” said Hanson. “When you have two backs who can block, you can do these types of things. It just makes our whole team better when Ben and Kolin are chewing up yards.”

Jackson ended up finishing the night well ahead of Walker in terms of yardage thanks to a 70-yard touchdown run on the opening play of the second half, which activated the running clock, but the two-headed rushing attack was near impossible for the Centurions to stop.

Jackson finished with 212 yards and a touchdown on 18 carries, and Walker added 113 yards on 14 carries.

“We give all the credit to the line, they worked really hard,” said Walker. “We have a couple of young guys who are stepping up. We had some injuries early in the season but we’re pulling through. I think we have two or three sophomore linemen.”

Hanson also praised senior linebacker Andrew Litton, who he referred to as “the Ben Jackson of the defense,” for his play on the night after returning from an injury.

The biggest story for GCC was turnovers. The two fumble returns for touchdowns were massive momentum swings. Then Centurions turned the ball over on downs four times, two of which were in Pioneer territory in the first half.

“We gave them 14 points and we can’t do that because (Jackson) is going to get more than that on his own. That just destroyed us mentally and emotionally,” said Greensburg Central Catholic coach Bret Colbert.

West Greene will move on to the semifinals next week to take on third-seeded Sto-Rox, which defeated Jeanette, 15-6.