Mike Vukovcan Attempting to win a championship never is easy as it shouldn’t be.
The Hopewell Vikings have a goal of winning the WPIAL Class 3A championship and tonight they were tested in a big-time way by the North Catholic Trojans in the quarterfinals.
After jumping out to a 21-7 halftime lead, Hopewell faced some adversity for the first time in a long time as North Catholic stormed back to tie the game at 21-21 in the 4th quarter.
North Catholic then had Hopewell on the ropes as they recovered a fumble in the 4th quarter and with 5 minutes left in the game, they were driving in Hopewell territory with less than 5 minutes left. However, the Vikings defense came up big as they stopped North Catholic on downs and gave their offense a chance to win it, which is exactly what they did.
Quarterback James Armstrong put the team on his back and used his legs to march Hopewell down the field and eventually scored on a 4-yard TD run.
The impressive part is that North Catholic knew Armstrong was going to run the ball and they couldn’t stop him.
North Catholic had one more chance to score a touchdown and take the lead but Hopewell’s defense stood tall and ended the Trojans upset bid, courtesy of a 4th down interception by Avery Bokor.
FINAL SCORE: HOPEWELL 27 NORTH CATHOLIC 21
#3 seed Hopewell (11-1) advances to the WPIAL semifinals to take on #2 seed Propel. The location of this game will be announced at some point this weekend.
After the game, Vikings Sports Now spoke with Hopewell HC Matt Mottes and Hopewell running back/wide receiver/linebacker Brody Rock.
