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Forget beating Bishop McDevitt's football team. Just challenging the Crusaders, just managing to muss their hair a bit, has been too much to ask.
Penn Manor came as close as anyone has Saturday.
The Comets gave mighty, undefeated, top-ranked-in-Pennsylvania McDevitt a dicey moment or two before falling, 49-21, in the semifinals of the District Three Class AAAA playoffs Saturday at Harrisburg High School's Severance Field.
The Crusaders (12-0) advance to Saturday's final against Cumberland Valley (11-2) at Hersheypark Stadium.
Penn Manor (10-3) took a confident attitude in and a measure of pride out, but they were facing a monster.
McDevitt has outscored its opponents by 34 per game, averaged 44 points and nearly 400 yards per game, and invoked the mercy rule seven times.
It has as many as 15 players who are or will be Division I recruits and two wide receivers, Salath Williams (Pitt) and Jeremy Cornelius (Purdue) who've already verbally committed.
"Our kids are competitors," Penn Manor coach Todd Mealy said. "We wanted to make mistakes, because if you don't make some mistakes, you're not trying to win. You're not gonna play a perfect game."
It's going to take near-perfection for someone to take the Crusaders out. Assuming the Crusaders are fully engaged, which is sometimes an issue.
"We weren't as intense as we needed to be," said McDevitt coach Jeff Weachter, the former Lebanon Catholic coach and Warwick assistant. "I could see it in practice this week. But, the guys responded and closed out the game."
Penn Manor gave them something to respond to. McDevitt scored easily on its first two possessions behind tailback Jameel Poteat, who had 123 yards by the end of the first quarter.
But then the Comets made a play, suckering the Crusaders outside and springing fullback Jared Shearer for 73 yards to the McDevitt 7. They scored three plays later on QB P.J. Rehm's 1-yard plunge.
Then it was a real dogfight for a while.
McDevitt got one more Poteat-fueled drive to make it 21-7. He finished with 202 yards in 29 tries, but was fairly quiet from then on.
"We changed our slants," Mealy said. "We should have made that switch sooner."
Penn Manor answered with its best drive of the day, a 12-play, 65-yarder that took nearly five minutes, aided by a key pass-interference call, and again ended with a Rehm plunge.
Five snaps later, Penn Manor's Austin Sahd jumped a slant route, made an athletic, juggling interception and rumbled 77 yards and — lo and behold — tied the game, with 91 seconds until halftime.
Now McDevitt QB Matt Johnson came out firing, and got the Crusaders to the Penn Manor 30, on a 20-yard pass-and-run to Dawan Smith, as time ran out.
Apparently.
The Comets were whistled for a face-mask penalty, giving McDevitt an untimed down in which Johnson scrambled and found Aaron Sye for a 25-yard TD.
Gut punch.
Mealy didn't like the call, but loved his kids' attitude about it.
"They were fired up by it," he said. "They felt like to win overcoming that would be something."
Mealy, perhaps fired up himself, opened the second half with an onsides kick, the Comets recovering. Very cool. Rehm immediately took a chance up top and was intercepted by McDevitt's Corey Ford. But still, very cool.
Penn Manor was now stuffing the run, but McDevitt has all those receivers and all that speed and Johnson, a junior who'll be courted by much of Division I-A next year.
This year's numbers: 132 of 194 for 2,480 yards, 32 touchdowns and three interceptions. Saturday's numbers, in the cold and howling wind: 11 of 18 for 250, three TDs, one pick.
On successive possessions, Johnson hit Williams for an 80-yard touchdown, and Sye for a 60-yard score.
That was it, except for the heartfelt hugs Mealy had for his seniors, who were sophomores when Mealy got the Penn Manor job in the summer of 2007.
"There was a lot of ambivalence in the community," Mealy said. "It was hard to get it going. It was these guys who did it."
It had been an emotional week for Mealy, who's brother, Tom, is McDevitt's athletic director and an assistant football coach. Mealy admitted this week to having had dreams in which his team was playing McDevitt in big playoff games.
The Comets, long moribund, made the postseason for the second straight year. Dreams are coming true.
"These seniors believed in me, believed in our coaches," Mealy said. "They've built something. I know a lot of young people and their parents were here. I hope they saw what this is like, because we want to be here every year."
Mike Gross is assistant sports editor of the Sunday News. E-mail him at mgross@lnpnews.com.
