WPIAL
Fort Cherry’s Tanner Garry, Matt Sieg Describe WPIAL Win

PITTSBURGH — The Fort Cherry Rangers won their first WPIAL Championship in school history on Friday, defeating the favored South Side Rams 42-28 at Acrisure Stadium.
Fort Cherry set the tone with an early touchdown: a Rams’ fumble on the first play of the game helped key the scoring drive. The Rams regained the lead late in the first quarter, but Fort Cherry went ahead for good with a 22 point outburst before the half.
Rangers’ head coach Tanner Garry said he emphasized the importance of starting fast in the run up to the championship game, not wanting his players distracted as they basked in the Acrisure Stadium ambiance.
Rangers Settle In Early
“We talked about it all week with coming down here. Sometimes you get caught with big eyes, looking around and not really being focused on the things you have to do,” Garry said. “We wanted to make sure that we were tuned in in the early going of that game. That was a great example of us trying to set the tone, something that we’ve really preached throughout the week.”
Garry said he and his team took some time to bask in the moment as they traveled north up the parkway, seeing billboards offering support and getting their first view of Downtown Pittsburgh and Acrisure Stadium as they broke out of the Fort Pitt tunnel. Once the game started, though, it was all business.
Sieg Stands Out
Sophomore quarterback Matt Sieg took over in the game, throwing and rushing for two touchdowns apiece. He also snagged an interception on defense.
Garry said he was almost lost for words in describing the young quarterback’s impact, opting to talk instead about who Sieg is off the field.
“I’ve used basically all my lines talking about him. It’s no secret that he’s a special player, but I think what a lot of people don’t realize is how good of a kid he is, on and off the field,” Garry said. “He’s a leader, he leads by example. Even as a freshman last year… this year as a sophomore he’s taken such a huge step both mentally, physically, just about the roles of playing quarterback and defense especially.”
On the defensive side of the ball, Sieg broke down what he saw on his third quarter interception.
“A lot of misdirection in the backfield. The tight end came out, I locked him up,” Sieg said. “He got behind me a little bit, I just ran back, looked back, and the ball was right in my lap.”
Sieg didn’t say much to hype up his performance on offense — 32 carries, 178 yards and two touchdowns and a two-point conversion, along with 166 yards and two touchdowns on nine completed passes.
Veteran Rangers O-Line
Instead, Sieg complimented the rest of his team: his offensive line in particular.
“They’ve been huge. They were the leaders last year, all year long,” Sieg said. “Opening up holes, you’ve seen what we’ve been able to do this year. It’s been unreal. It’s all because of them, truly.”
Garry described how having a veteran unit helps open up his team’s offense.
“We have a group up front that had been playing together, most of them, since they were sophomores… they’ve just been fantastic up front,” Garry said. “The way I like to explain it is, whenever you get a new offensive group that comes in, new offensive linemen especially, you kinda go back to some of the basics and the things that you want to focus and be really good on.”
Garry said he makes sure to emphasize the trust he has in his players when calling plays. He uses the rapport they’ve built over the past few years to decide what to do.
“This group, because we’ve had the same guys for so long, we’ve been able to add so much to the offense, and we’re able to do that because they can handle it and they know the things that we like to do,” Garry said. “There’s times when we come in at halftime and I always use the same line: ‘hey we’re gonna make this adjustment and call up this play because you guys can handle it. They know what we’re trying to get to, what we’re trying to accomplish. The physicality they play with up front has been really, I think, one of the biggest contributors to our success this year. They’ve been great.”
Fort Cherry Special
While Sieg took over the game, he took a backseat on what was perhaps the most exciting play of the afternoon. The Rangers executed the ‘Philly Special’ trick play — made famous by the Eagles’ Super Bowl LII win — to perfection, with Sieg swinging a lateral to receiver Shane Cornali on fourth down. Cornali, in turn, found running back Ethan Faletto all alone in the right corner of the end zone for a seven-yard, go-ahead touchdown pass.
Garry described his nerves ahead of the pivotal play call.
“We’ve been running that one for two years now. We have a couple that we just kinda like to have in the back pocket,” Garry said. “I was nervous to call it in that situation, but obviously gotta kinda go all out in these situations.”
As big of a moment as the play was, Garry said it almost didn’t happen. Facing fourth-and-two, the Rangers called a timeout ahead of the play to talk things over, eventually settling on a run play. A false start penalty backed them up five yards, necessitating a different call.
“100 percent. We did not have that play call on whenever we had the short yardage,” Garry said. “We were in the huddle before and we were saying ‘should we go with that play?’ We said ‘eh, I think we should just punch it in.’ Then we got the false start and said ‘okay, yeah, we’re gonna call it.’”
Rangers Family Ties
Familial connections run deep amongst the Rangers. Tanner Garry’s grandfather, Jim Garry, coached at Fort Cherry for 43 years. Emotion overcame the younger Garry as he described how his grandfather would have reacted to the program’s first WPIAL Championship. Having grown up around the program, Garry offered a dose of perspective, deflecting the win’s significance from himself.
“He’d be proud. He would be proud,” Garry said. “I grew up around the program with him… knowing that the elusive one, that he had the chance to get a couple times, didn’t have the opportunity to actually bring one home. To be able to do it now, obviously, especially with this group of kids, a special, special group… it’s about them.”
For senior right guard Louis Ryan, the championship win carried a similar added weight. His dad, Lou Ryan, also attended Fort Cherry. The elder Ryan’s Rangers, however, never managed to reach the promised land of a league title.
“My dad got denied from his WPIAL Championship back in [1997 against Riverview]. I’m actually wearing the shirt right now,” Ryan said, brandishing the faded tee. “We knew, freshman to senior year, this is what we were gonna work for, this is what we were gonna do.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFx5Fm4yHKw&feature=youtu.be
