2013 in review

Only two of Franklin County’s six football teams managed winning records in 2013, but there were plenty of stories to go around.

Shippensburg posted a record of 8-2, recovering from an 0-2 start to go 7-0 on its way to the Mid Penn Colonial Division championship. But the Greyhounds were handled 49-19 by Muhlenberg in the first round of the District 3 Class AAA playoffs.

It continued a good trend for the Hounds, who are 52-25 since 2007, with the worst record in that span 5-5.

Chambersburg had the other winning record at 6-5. But the Trojans surely felt they should have done better. They held a 31-13 lead over State College in the third period and lost 35-34, and they led Harrisburg 51-32 in the fourth quarter and fell 54-51; those were crushing defeats.

The Trojans did reach the District 3-AAAA playoffs, but were defeated 21-3 by eventual champion Lower Dauphin.

Perhaps the biggest story of the season was James Buchanan. The Rockets broke a 20-game losing streak by edging Camp Hill in the third game of the season, a win clinched on a 50-yard run by Hunter Brown and a late interception by Shamar Pates.

JB then had wins over Waynesboro and Big Spring and was 3-3. The biggest victory came in the next-to-last game when a late touchdown catch by Peter Hughey gave the Rockets a 7-3 win over Northern, a team it had never beaten. JB finished with a 4-6 mark.

For the second straight season, Greencastle-Antrim had to win its final three games just to get to .500, and the Blue Devils did just that.

Waynesboro’s 0-10 record was not unexpected given the youth of the Indians. What was surprising was that head coach Scott Shacreaw was fired with four games left, putting assistant Steve Myers in charge.

Mercersburg Academy finished with a 2-6 record after taking wins in its first two games, over McKinley Tech and Sidwell Friends. The Blue Storm enters the 2014 season with a 14-game losing skid in the Mid-Atlantic Prep League.