Sunday, November 26 2000 Sunday News http://www.lancasteronline.com/sunnews/
For the fall season, results are in from most voting precincts, and it's a landslide.
The Lancaster-Lebanon League is at the moment the best interscholastic all-sports league in District Three, if the term all-sports league is broadly and deeply (and, it says here, accurately) defined. By far. It is surely one of the best leagues in the state.
It's been possible to make a compelling argument that the L-L has been the best for the past decade or so, at least in our region of Pennsyvania, under the following criteria:
1. All sports are created equal, i.e. volleyball and golf count as much as football and basketball.
2. Not only that, but girls count as much as boys.
3. For district and state competition, all enrollment classes are created equal, i.e. Class A counts as much as Class AAAA.
By those egalitarian standards, the L-L has long looked pretty good. But in the past few months, it's gotten ridiculous. This fall alone:
In football, the L-L had one District Three champion (Manheim Central), two finalists and six semifinalists.
In field hockey, one state champ (Warwick), one district champ and two state finalists.
In golf, it had the top five (including champion Blaine Peffley of Cedar Crest) and seven of the top 11 in the district tournament. In the state tournament, a runner-up, two of the top 5, three of the top 10 and seven of the top 25.
Girls' tennis? A district and state champion doubles team (Conestoga Valley's Stephanie and Suzie Eckhart).
Girls' volleyball? A district champ (Conestoga Valley), the top three finishers in districts and a second and third in states.
In soccer, it was not a big year, but still one district title (Manheim Central).
The L-L and most other leagues around here play seven fall interscholastic sports. In six of them, the L-L had a district champion. In four of them, it had a team or individual finish first or second in the state. Eight L-L teams or individuals finished in the top five in the state.
And this is just one season of one year. And Manheim Central is still playing football.
This, of course, is in marked contrast to the L-L's perceived image of being second-string at best to its geographic proximate, the Mid-Penn Conference.
The MPC is huge, sprawling and, arguably, the closest thing we have to an ancestor to the late, great Central Penn League, which truly was the acknowledged major league of prep sports between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh from World War II through the league's demise in the 1970s.
The Mid-Penn has Cumberland Valley, the huge, heavily funded multi-sport monster in the suburbs between Harrisburg and Carlisle. The MPC has George Chaump, who includes NFL, Big 10 and head Division I and I-AA college jobs on what might be the gaudiest resume of any high school football coach in America.
In basketball, the Mid-Penn has Harrisburg, the 1998 Class AAAA state champ which appeared capable of doing it again in '99 and '00 until self-immolation. Harrisburg's state championship was the sixth big-school crown the Mid-Penn has won since the PIAA went to four classes in 1983. The others went to Carlisle (1985-88) and Steel-High ('92).
In football and hoops, the MPC has Steel-High, a tiny school from a gritty town that has won two of the last three state AAA basketball championships, and three of the last four District Three Class A football titles.
Mid-Penn alumni include the Seattle Seahawks' Ricky Watters, Detroit Pistons' Billy Owens, Jacksonville Jaguars' Kyle Brady, Minnesota Vikings' Robert Tate, Temple hoop star Quincy Wadley and Penn State football player Kenny Watson.
For the many who think high school sport begins with football and ends with basketball, the above is more than enough evidence: In the games the count, the theory goes, the Mid-Penn is it.
But even that assertion rests on ground that has lately gotten shaky.
You may recall that McCaskey of the L-L played Hempfield of the L-L for the district Class AAAA boys' basketball title a year ago. That's right, an all-L-L big-school final. And in the semis, McCaskey simply took Harrisburg apart.
(In fact, the general athletic renaissance of McCaskey, a Central Penn alumnus, the L-L's biggest school and in general a potential giant, is a significant part of this story.)
You may recall that the 1999 district AAAA football final pitted Cumberland Valley against Wilson, the L-L section Two champ.
Final score: Wilson 47, Cumberland Valley 0. Cedar Crest, the L-L Section One champ, gave Wilson a much, much better game in the semis.
This fall, Cumberland Valley (fortified by six transfers), got back to the AAAA final, where it beat previously undefeated South Western of York County.
But Warwick, perhaps the sixth-best team in the L-L, gave Cumberland Valley a mighty scare in September. And South Western managed a 35-34 win over 7-3 Cedar Crest in week three, when the Falcons tried and failed for a two-point conversion in the final seconds.
In AAA, the Mid-Penn's best was Middletown. The Blue Raiders dominated the Mid-Penn's second-tier division and finished the regular season undefeated.
But in the district semis, Conestoga Valley of the L-L handled Middletown 14-0. CV then lost 30-10 to Manheim Central in the final.
In the District Three playoffs, Manheim Central has won nine straight titles, 20 games and has a 23-2 overall record over 18 years. All unprecedented.
We're not saying the L-L is better than the Mid-Penn in football. We're saying the recent evidence that counts, inter-league and postseason play, does not suggest one league is on a different level than the other.
And that's in football, the Mid-Penn's perceived best sport and nowhere near the L-L's best.
And while Central stands alone in district play in its sport, it does not stand alone among powerhouse programs in its league in all sports.
Warwick has now won two straight state AAA field hockey championships, three straight district titles, and has produced enough Division I college players to stock a small league.
Nobody in the state is consistently better than CV in girls' volleyball, Hempfield in boys' volleyball, Elco in boys' soccer, Cedar Crest in golf for the past 25 years and Hempfield in golf lately, Lancaster Catholic in AAA girls' basketball and Lebanon Catholic in A, and Annville-Cleona in softball.
A-C won a state boys' AA hoop title two years ago, and went deep into states last winter. In hockey and soccer, Lancaster Mennonite is usually around at the end. Space doesn't permit a full recount of Columbia's history in basketball, or McCaskey's in track.
And so on. There's a prep all-sports monster in our midst. Bet you didn't even know it.