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By Rich Rhoades

CLARION – Storylines and key matchups abound for this year’s District 9 Class AA Championship game Friday night at Clarion University’s Memorial Stadium.

The top-seeded Karns City (9-2) takes on second-seeded Brockway (8-3) in a 7 p.m. kickoff. It’ll be the physical, grind-it-out Gremlins against a vaunted Rovers passing game led by record-breaking junior quarterback Derek Buganza.

Buganza broke the district’s single-season passing yardage last week in the Rovers’ 37-20 win over Moniteau on the same field and at 3,435 yards for the season, he needs 250 yards to break Mechanicsburg’s Zach Frazer’s mark of 3,684 yards set in 2004.

Brockway head coach Frank Varischetti acknowledged that at least 250 yards would seem to be a requirement for his team in a winning recipe against the Gremlins, but that’s not the focus.

“If Derek breaks the record by a yard and we lose, it’ll be nice to him, but it doesn’t mean a whole heckuva lot to the team,” said Varischetti, who also said it wouldn’t mean anything to Buganza either. “We’d rather win the game.”

“We haven’t even addressed (the record),” he said. “The kids know he has a chance to break it, but we don’t talk about it. Our number one goal is to win the District 9 title and it’s staring us right in the face.”

The Rovers are looking for their first title since 2005 and title No. 5 overall. The Gremlins and Rovers are certainly familiar finals foes. They met in the finals four straight years from 2000 to 2003 with each team winning twice. The Rovers also beat the Gremlins in the 1987 district final and in the only non-title game playoff meeting between the two, Karns City routed Brockway, 62-28, in the 2007 semifinals.

Head coach Ed Conto’s Gremlins are seeking their third straight district title, but with a nearly brand-new group from last year. The Gremlins lost over 20 seniors to graduation, so this year’s success is a bit surprising but definitely not shocking considering the program’s long-term success.

“I didn’t know what these guys could do,” Conto said. “We lost 23 seniors with a good three-year run. This group played behind them in practice for two years. I told them last year to keep working, because next year, you won’t see anything better than you’re seeing (in practice) now, until perhaps some teams we see late in the postseason.”

He was right as the Gremlins went on to share the Keystone Shortway Athletic Conference title with Punxsutawney. Their only two losses came to arch-rival Moniteau in Week 8 and then defending state champion Wilmington in Week 10.

The Gremlins have faced a handful of spread offenses this season and handled them pretty well, but Conto acknowledged that the Rovers aren’t the same thing with plenty of screens and crossing routes.

“First off, we’re going to play aggressive football because that’s what we do,” Conto said. “We’ll mix our coverages and do what we’ve done all year. We’re not going to try (different) things.”

Which means trying to put the Rovers offense on their heels rather than the other way around by pressuring Buganza and playing the typical Gremlins physical defensive football.

“We cannot fall asleep and have to stay disciplined and aggressive,” Conto said. “It’s something we’re looking forward to.”

How the Gremlins pressure Buganza and what the Rovers do to counter and overcome it will be a cat-and-mouse and/or football chess game worth watching.

“We expect them to defensively to try to get a lot of pressure on the quarterback and we’re not totally sure how they’ll do it,” Varischetti said. “They don’t seem to blitz a whole lot. They use five- and four-man fronts and slant a lot. We’ve seen both strategies, bring more or coverage, and we’ve had trouble at times against both. Curwensville brought three or four every play and dropped seven or eight into coverage.”

The Golden Tide beat the Rovers, 32-19, in Week 6 by pressuring and limiting Buganza to 160 yards passing on 14-of-27 attempts with one interception.

Another huge part of the Curwensville negation of Brockway’s offense was a powerful running game that gained 350 yards, keeping the Rovers off the field.

That’s Karns City’s usual style of attack. In last week’s 40-0 rout of Kane, the Gremlins rushed for 323 yards, led by Aaron Markle’s 156 yards and three touchdowns.

“Take time off the clock, control the ball,” Conto said. “If you have long drives, it can humble teams.”

Markle’s 1,054 yards and 16 touchdowns lead the Gremlins, but four other backs, one of them quarterback Dylan Hipple, have rushed for over 300 yards.

“Our defense has had a lot of success at times and at other times it’s been drilled,” Varischetti said. “The only team that sustained some long drives against us was Curwensville. We’re comfortable if we get into a shootout because the kids know we can score.”

While the Gremlins are poised to go over 3,000 yards rushing for the season, don’t underestimate Hipple’s ability to throw the ball. The junior first-year starter has completed over 62 percent of his passes (66-of-106) for 927 yards and nine touchdowns.

“He’s stepped in and done a tremendous job,” Conto said. “And then everything else fell into place.”

The Gremlins are deep and balanced with some key players leading the way. Senior Brandon Collier is Hipple’s top receiving target with 22 receptions for 362 yards and five scores. From his cornerback position, he leads the Gremlins with five interceptions.

Senior fullback/defensive end Jake Wagner is second behind Markle with 398 yards rushing and he ranks second with 66 tackles and leads the team with 12 sacks on defense. Senior linebacker Carrick Harp leads the defense with 67 stops.

Rovers junior receiver Mike Vervoort probably already owns the single-season district record with 79 receptions and at 1,307 yards trailed single-season record-holder Clearfield’s Wes Dahlem’s 1994 mark of 1,349 by just 42 yards. Vervoort has 15 TD catches, which is four shy of tying the district mark.

Junior Jake Shaffer has 59 grabs for 889 yards.

Defensively, linebacker Seth Galluzzi leads the Rovers with 123 tackles and cornerback Ethan Gillespie has four interceptions.

Another factor that held true in the win over Moniteau was the Rovers’ ability to create turnovers. They’re plus-8 for the season in turnover ratio thanks to 31 opponent turnovers.

“That’s the name of the game, especially for us,” Varischetti said of the turnover numbers. “We’re a very opportunistic defense and a lot of times we’re able to overcome our own because of what we can get.”

So it’ll be a program in its fourth straight title game taking on another searching for its first title in four years. Varischetti hopes that his youth will be able to not be intimidated by championship surroundings.

“Karns City doesn’t have a ton of experience coming back, but these kids have done nothing but win since they’ve been in the program,” Varischetti said. “They’ve never not won a title game and there’s nobody on our team that’s played in one.

“We’re a very loose team. We don’t take ourselves too seriously and go out and sling it around and have fun.”

For Conto, the season has been already deemed a success.

“Whatever happens, I’ll be proud because it’s a great group of kids,” he said.