LOWER MERION — It was the kind of game where records never matter, except that on Saturday, Radnor’s Adam Krafczek seemed bent on cutting a record of his own.
The senior Raptors runner rushed for 321 yards in 37 carries and scored an astounding six touchdowns to lead Radnor to a 51-25 victory in the team’s age-old rivalry game against Lower Merion.
Krafczek’s timing couldn’t have been any better, and it certainly was faster than 78 RPMs.
(Krafczek can feel free to Google that.)
“We were searching for our first win throughout the whole year,” Radnor quarterback Tomas Moreland said. “I think how we played today sort of justified how we are, or that’s really who we are. We should have displayed that earlier in the season, but we didn’t. But at the end of the day we ended strong and that’s all that matters.”
Krafczek could have said the same thing about his game. Coach Drew Devitt said Krafczek had been battling shin splints for much of the season, “so he didn’t have that burst. But the last two or three weeks, he started getting healthy and he had his burst then.
“Today he was hitting the holes, he was seeing it,” Devitt added. “He’s a talented player, a talented kid. He’ll play football.”
Radnor’s Adam Krafczek celebrates one of his six touchdowns Saturday amid a win over Lower Merion (Credit: Rob Parent for On Pattison)
If and when Krafczek moves on to a higher level, he’ll have at least one very memorable game to remember, and to build from. According to a staff full of Delaware County Daily Times recordkeepers, his six rushing touchdowns came two shy of the county record for TDs in a single game. Sun Valley’s Tony Canci scored eight times, seven on the ground, in a game against Oxford in 2004.
Four others had seven TDs in a single game over a long period of years … though not as long a period of time as this Radnor-LM football game has been played.
Radnor-v-Lower Merion has long been called “The Rivalry,” not only because that’s obvious, but because the game between the schools (Lower Merion was known as Ardmore High way back when) was first played in October of 1897. They didn’t play in 1901 and 1905 for various reasons, but otherwise… there’s a reason this game is called the oldest continually active public high school football game in the country.
“Well,” said one Radnor assistant coach, “ONE of them, anyway.”
Details, details…
“This is like, the 130th game (or so) and it means more to us,” Moreland said. “This game more than anything.”
It does seem like Krafczek inscribed his name into the school record books. That master statkeeper AI reminds us that Jack Wilson scored five TDs in a Radnor game some time ago. That was thought to be the most in one game.
But look deeper and see what Krafczek did in the second half. He rambled 48 yards for a score with 10:57 left in the third quarter. Then came a 12-yard TD run with 8:41 left, then an 18-yard burst through the line for a score with 5:22 on the clock, then an 11-yard TD with 2:02 left, and finally the 30-yard touchdown with 10:20 left to play.
In the space of just over a quarter of play, Krafczek ran for five touchdowns and a tight game had become a 51-25 lead. This in a game that had history underscoring it, and frustration, too. For both LM and Radnor entered winless on the season. All this on the day after so many of their Central League counterparts had opened the District One playoffs.
“Our guys have been battling the entire season,” Devitt said. “They worked their tails off. We had some really close games early in the season. So this one we needed, not just as a team but as a program. This win means more than anything. We broke a losing streak (of 14 games) and hopefully that sparks a winning streak for next season.”
This loss hurt Lower Merion a little bit deeper. The Aces (also called the Bulldogs in football) are months away from being told to share a practice field with this year’s Harriton football JV players in a newly merged school district team. That happened recently when the PIAA approved the district application for the move, after Harriton ended its varsity season with a single bad loss to Pottstown.
“Yeah, that is the word,” Lower Merion coach Joe Augustine said. “We haven’t really been told anything beyond that. The admin, they’re doing their thing, and they’re working to iron out everything.”
That will be a tall challenge, but the Aces-Bulldogs did at least lead the way in the first half. This after an LM safety and Krefczek’s two-yard TD run had given Radnor a 9-0 lead five minutes into the game.
But Lower Merion fought back with a scoring run by QB Jack Garrett, and a perfect, 71-yard bomb of a TD pass from Garrett to Drake Waddy that gave LM a 13-9 lead.
Lower Merion quarterback Jack Garrett scores on a keeper Saturday against Radnor (Credit: Rob Parent for On Pattison)
Moreland hit Aiden Swindells with a three-yard scoring flip to give Radnor the lead back, but another Garrett scoring run followed and Lower Merion would have a 19-16 halftime lead.
After that, as history would show … this latest edition of The Rivalry would become the Adam Krefczek Show.
“It’s been a really tough season,” Krafczek said. “We were sort of close in almost every game we played. We have the guys. Our offense wasn’t clicking in the red zone, though. But today we found a way to push through. … We gave it 110 percent and this is what happens when you give it every game you’ve got.”