Hampton hopes to make noise vs. defending WPIAL champ Thomas Jefferson

By: Chris Harlan
Thursday, November 11, 2021 | 8:10 PM

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The sound of a train horn punctuates Hampton home games, thanks to an ardent Talbots fan at a nearby home.

It’s one of the WPIAL’s loudest touchdown traditions.

“I didn’t know about it my first year and it scared the hell out of me,” said coach Jacque DeMatteo, who’s in his 14th season there. “I didn’t know what the heck that thing was at first.”

The blaring train horn fits perfectly this season since Hampton has a running game that’s hard to stop. Behind that ground attack, the Talbots celebrated their first conference title since 2014. Last week, they won their first playoff game since 2015.

“He’s been blowing that baby a lot this year,” DeMatteo said with a laugh.

Next stop: No. 4 seed Hampton (11-0) will try to keep making noise when No. 5 Thomas Jefferson (7-2) visits for a WPIAL Class 4A quarterfinal at 7 p.m. Friday. The Jaguars are seeded lower in the bracket as the third-place team in the Big Eight, but they’re also two-time defending WPIAL and PIAA champions.

“We’re playing one of the most successful programs in the state of Pennsylvania,” DeMatteo said. “We’ll give it our best shot. We’ll respect them, but we’re not going to fear anyone.”

Fifth is the lowest seed given to Thomas Jefferson since drawing the sixth seed in 2015. Yet, the Jaguars won the WPIAL championship that year, one of their five titles in the past six years.

“I told our kids, ‘Listen, however you get to the playoffs, you’re there,’” Thomas Jefferson coach Bill Cherpak said. “We have won the championship more times not being the No. 1 seed than being the No. 1 seed.”

Thomas Jefferson is coming off a 41-0 win over No. 12 Indiana.

Hampton is trying to reach the WPIAL semifinals for the first time since 2009. That year, the team had train-themed T-shirts, a fun tribute to a star running back the Talbots rode deep into the WPIAL playoffs.

This year, their train has more than one car.

Hampton has two rushers with around 1,100 yards and three others with at least 350. Senior Christian Liberto leads with 1,161 yards on 186 carries, and sophomore Brock Borgo has 1,088 on 94 attempts.

Borgo has 17 touchdowns and Liberto has 16.

“We have a nice group of high school running backs, and they all seem to have their own unique style,” DeMatteo said. “We have two quarterbacks who are kind of like clones of one another and a couple of wings and tailbacks who are interchangeable parts. That’s probably the best way to describe them: interchangeable.”

Senior Matt DeMatteo, junior Joey Mayer and senior Jacob Premick have combined for another 1,300 yards on the ground. DeMatteo is the coach’s son. He and Mayer are quarterbacks and both will play.

Hampton is run-heavy and uses wingbacks for handoffs, but don’t mistake the offense for a wing-T. Instead, the team combines three different running approaches.

It’s an idea DeMatteo said he borrowed from his uncle, who coached football at Curwensville.

“He’d preach to me that you have to have a P-D-Q,” said DeMatteo, an acronym for power, deception and quickness. “We’re incorporating all of that, but honestly, it’s very simple. We only really have four run plays. That’s not a lot.”

Liberto scored twice on 6-yard runs last week to defeat Plum, 14-13, in the WPIAL first round. A week earlier in their regular-season finale, the Talbots rushed for 487 yards and six touchdowns.

“There’s really nobody running anything like they do,” Cherpak said. “It looks like somebody took the things they liked from three different offenses and put them together.

“It’s different, but they make it work.”

Chris Harlan is a TribLive reporter covering sports. He joined the Trib in 2009 after seven years as a reporter at the Beaver County Times. He can be reached at charlan@triblive.com.

Tags: Hampton, Thomas Jefferson