The Shippensburg high school football team is off to an undefeated start, despite the fact that it has yet to fire on all cylinders.
The Greyhounds (4-0, 1-0 Mid Penn Colonial Division) have been explosive on offense, evidenced by an average of 30.25 points per game, but they have also struggled at times to maintain drives and have relied on big plays. They will take their perfect record on the road to face Mifflin County (0-4, 0-1 MPC) at 7 on Friday.
“We’re not running a ton of plays, but we’ve been successful, so we’re going to keep going,” Ship coach Eric Foust said. “We certainly want to have balance and get everyone involved, but if they don’t stop it, why change it?”
The offense has been led by Adam Houser, who is averaging just over 10 yards per carry (71 rushes for 711 yards). Last week, he ran 17 times for 163 yards and two touchdowns. He also had a 61-yard receiving touchdown. The next highest rushing total is 223 by Alex Sharrow on 21 carries, with 157 of those coming in the first week. Quarterback Zack Manning has completed 12 of 28 passes for 247 yards and three touchdowns.
Foust said, “We want to continue to get more balance and get other pieces involved, but Adam is a huge part of what we do. And it’s not like we are overworking him. He’s had 20 carries in one game, but he’s just been so explosive for us.”
Defensively, Shippensburg has been at its best when it forces defenses to drive the length of the field. But too often, little mistakes turn into big plays for the opposing offense, evidenced by Waynesboro’s 44-yard completion on a 4th & 9 with less than a minute left in the game when the receiver got behind the Ship secondary. The Hounds also missed a pair of extra points.
“Our pass defense and our kicking game are two things we worked on a lot this week,” Foust said. “I think we will be strong in those areas this week. We also need to tackle better than we did last week.”
Mifflin County will pose a similar challenge as Waynesboro with big bodies on both sides of the ball. The Huskies lost 20-13 to Northern York to open their division play last week.
“They have some big bodies. We’re going to have to be the more physical team on both sides of the ball,” Foust said. “If we can stop them from powering up on us, we will have a good chance to win.”
Mifflin County is led by quarterback Noah Wright, who has completed 37 of 96 passes for 502 yards. He also has 83 yards rushing. Sophomore Gage Schaeffer is the leading rusher with 166 yards in three games, and Julian Jackson leads the receivers with seven catches for 123 yards.