Highlands football season highlighted by early winning streak, late-season surge

By: William Whalen
Monday, November 15, 2021 | 10:06 AM

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When the No. 8-seeded Highlands Rams fell to No. 9 New Castle in the first round of the WPIAL Class 4A football playoffs, it might have marked a disappointing ending to the season. It also gave a glimpse into a promising future.

“I feel like we changed the narrative at Highlands, and we brought winning back to our school,” senior captain Caliel Long said. “The standard is the standard, and we just raised the standard.”

After flirting with the playoffs the past few seasons, Highlands (7-4, 4-3 Allegheny Conference) finally broke through to the postseason. This season was Dom Girardi’s first trip to the playoffs in his five years as coach.

“This year, to me, a lot was about a group of kids who had very little or no varisty experiecnce,” Girardi said. “The way they responded to coaching. The way they responded to adversity on a Friday night and responding to competition. We came into the season with seven or eight new kids on both sides of the ball.”

Highlands exploded out of the gate to start the season. The Rams started 4-0 and outscored their first four opponents 146-20. To say the Rams were riding high would be an understatement.

“Those first four games put us in the mindset that we couldn’t be beaten,” junior quarterback Chandler Thimons said. “We got humbled by Hampton, and it all went downhill until Armstrong. We ended up playing our best game of the season against them.”

Thimons finished the season with 1,340 yards passing and 17 touchdowns. A three-year starter, Thimons also eclipsed former quarterback Seth Cohen’s career passing record (4,037), finishing with 4,058 yards. Thimons was just as effective carrying the ball with 887 rushing yards and 11 touchdowns.

Highlands got the prime-time treatment for the Hampton game. Hampton came in ranked No. 5 in Class 4A, and a win over the Talbots almost assuredly would have put Highlands in the top five. But that would not be the case.

The football gods offered up some humble pie to the Golden Rams in the form of a 27-7 loss. Couple the Hampton loss with a 23-21 setback to conference rival Plum and a 29-14 loss to Indiana, and the season could have gone either direction. Highlands could continue its slide or turn things around.

“There’s an old saying, ‘You’re never as good as you think you are, nor, are you as bad as somebody says you are,’” Girardi said. “You’re somewhere in between. Maybe we found out that maybe we weren’t as good as we thought we are.

“Just as people were saying how bad we were, we figured it out and finished the season with three straight wins.”

The Rams’ stampede picked up momentum against a highly touted Armstrong team. Highlands got back into the win column with a convincing 41-27 victory over the River Hawks. The win ended Armstrong’s three-game winning streak.

“If you share the same goals with the same group of guys, good things are going to happen,” Long said. “We played with a chip on our shoulders, too.”

A big road win over Greensburg Salem and rival Knoch closed out the season.

“We had our doubters, and that’s what we did this season was prove our doubters wrong,” Long said.

With senior running back Brock White nursing a leg injury for much of this past summer and into the regular season, Girardi stumbled on a gem of an underclassman in sophomore bulldozer Luke Bombalski. Bombalski ran between the tackles, dragging and pushing defenders all the way.

Bombalski rushed for 1,276 yards and 15 touchdowns and ended the season with a 6.1 yards-per-carry average.

“The biggest compliment you can give a sophomore is to say he plays like he was a junior,” Girardi said. “I’ll be excited to see what he does when he is a junior.”

Junior Landan Signorella led all receivers with 536 yards and seven touchdowns.

“The key going into the offseason is to look back at what you did and be proud of that and also have that feeling in the stomach about that last loss,” Girardi said. “We have to do whatever it takes to make that next step forward.”

William Whalen is a freelance writer.

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