The Chambersburg football team, coming off a not-so-flattering season opening defeat, travels to Dillsburg on Friday night to take on Northern York, for what is believed to be the first-ever football meeting of these schools.

Lucas Lohman

Although the Polar Bears are a Class 5A Colonial Division team, they have a solid football program, an experienced team, and would love nothing more than to knock off a Mid Penn Commonwealth team at Robert Bostic Stadium.

“They have a big number of guys back, and they have good experience — you can see it the way they play,” Trojan coach Mark Luther said.

Northern, which crushed Red Land 45-6 last week, was a young team that still went 7-4 and reached the playoffs a year ago. With plenty of talent back, the goals are higher.

“Their quarterback is not big, but is slippery and athletic and throws lefty,” Luther said. “They like to get him outside the pocket and let him run. Their running backs are good-sized and they run straight line and are physical.”

QB Timmy Bonin, who threw for over 1,000 yards last year, was 16-for-23 last week for 250 yards and three scores. The running backs are Cole Bartram (58 yards last week) and Talon Belluscio (30), while the top receivers were Kyle Lamb (5 catches, 88 yards, 1 TD), Mason Yohn (4-83-1) and Alex Williams (4-28).

The Polar Bears return four of five offensive linemen, and Yohn is one of the most accurate kickers in the conference.

Luther said his team has focused on cleaning up the mistakes they made in a 38-21 loss to Central Bucks East last week.

“The biggest thing this week was working on the little things, like being in the right alignment and taking the right first step,” Luther said. “If we can do those better this week, we’ll be OK.”

CB East had nearly 400 yards of offense last week and, with Northern’s experience on offense, the Chambersburg defense will have to play better.

Luther said he liked the job that Sedrick Vessah and Lucas Lohman did on the defensive line last week.

“Sedrick did a lot of good things,” he said, “and Lucas had a good game, too. He’s started on the O-line as a sophomore and junior, and this year we moved him to D-line, where he’d never played before. But as the game wore on last week, he got into good form and was a factor. We’re looking for he and Sedrick to be factors again this week.”

Luther also praised the work of running back Dayre Senft, who picked up 43 yards on four carries in his varsity debut.

NOTES: The game will be played on a grass field, the only one Chambersburg will play on this year … MidPennBroadcasting.com will live stream the game … Three Trojan QBs combined to go 21-for-32, for 265 yards and 3 TDs last week, and it’s possible all three could play again this week … Jermere Jones had 70 yards (plus 41 yards on the ground), Riley Harmon 86 and Evan Zullinger 109.