PALMYRA — It’s an historic start, and a great position from which to build.
On a clear Friday night at Palmyra’s Buck Swank Stadium, the Ephrata football team used a strong opening half, as well as 135 rushing yards and four touchdowns from running back Andre Weidman, to post a 28-7 nonleague triumph over the hometown Cougars. Now 2-0 on the young season, the Mountaineers are off to their best start since 2000.
Most of today’s Ephrata players had not yet been born the last time Mountaineers won the opening game of a football season.
Kris Miller said it’s been 18 years since his team started 1-0, and although it wasn’t pretty and there are areas to clean up, the head coach will take the 41-20 nonleague triumph over Muhlenberg on Saturday morning at Ephrata’s War Memorial Field.
Alyssa Fedorshak was at her family’s Ephrata Township home one October evening about a year ago when she went into her bedroom in search of the charger for her laptop.
That’s when Fedorshak, who was barefoot, felt a pinprick on the bottom of her left foot. On the red carpet beneath her, she found one tiny, silver piece of a sewing needle. The other piece? That had snapped off in her foot. Three days later, she underwent an hourlong surgery to have it removed.
Just a week earlier, Fedorshak, then a junior at Ephrata High School, had competed in the Lancaster-Lebanon League girls cross country championship race. After her surgery, she thought she could heal fast enough to compete in the upcoming District Three Class 3A championship race, just four days later.
You simply can’t miss Andre Weidman.
His powerful 6-foot-1, 205-pound frame makes him stand out on the football field, where he’s set to embark on his junior season for Ephrata this fall.
But the first thing that grabs your attention is his spectacular hairdo.
“Last year we came up with the idea that we were going to dye our hair blond,” Weidman said of his Mountaineers teammates. “And I’ve stuck with it.”
Coming off a tough loss in Week Three against Lebanon, Ephrata bounced back with a 24-7 win on the road over Lancaster Catholic on Friday night.
This marks the Mountaineers’ first Lancaster-Lebanon League victory over Catholic since both teams joined Section Three in 2018.
We here at www.ephratamounts.com are proud sponsors of the Dodgeball for Diabetes tournament.