JEFFREY REINHART jreinhart@LNPnews.com
Headed to Pequea Valley on Wednesday to chat with some members of the Braves. Mighty interesting kid playing for PV this season. You’ve probably seen his name mentioned in here a lot the first three weeks this season: Sean Persch. He does a little bit of everything for rookie coach Curtis Waltman and the Braves. And he does them all really, really well. Here is my column on Sean and the Braves from Thursday’s New Era:
He is arguably the busiest player in any given Lancaster-Lebanon League football game.
He’s also arguably the most underrated player in the league, but when you play for a team that’s known more for its losing streaks – not an impressive list of section or district championships – it’s not a total shocker that he doesn’t always grab the headlines.
He is Sean Persch.
And Pequea Valley’s secret weapon is a true jack-of-all-trades.
On offense, rookie coach Curtis Waltman lines Persch up at all three wideout spots – X, Y and Z for you position junkies – at halfback, at fullback and even at quarterback in the Braves’ no-huddle, spread offense.
On defense, Persch is a mainstay at free safety, but he’ll also slide over and play cover corner on occasion. He also dabbles at linebacker, although just at practice. The 6-1, 160-pound junior also kicks off, handles the extra points and field goals, is the pooch punter and he returns kicks and punts.
“I’m still sore the following Thursday, right up until the next game,” Persch said. “But I love that feeling. I love the feeling of knowing you gave absolutely everything you had, and that you left everything on the field.”
Persch rarely comes off the field, and he’s a big reason why Pequea Valley – despite a 0-3 start – is averaging 280.3 yards per game (way up from just 121.8 yards per game last year) and is averaging 19 points a game after scoring 48 points total last year.
“He’s a weapon,” Pequea Valley sophomore quarterback Michael Rice said of Persch. “He does a lot of things for us. He has heart – more heart than probably anybody else out here.”
Persch doesn’t just play all of those positions; he excels at them.
Take Pequea Valley’s Week 2 game against Hamburg, for example, when Persch had 10 carries for 163 yards, had six catches for 111 yards, completed 2-of-5 passes for 35 yards and amassed 118 yards on a pair of kick returns, including a 95-yard kick return for a touchdown.
If you lost track, that’s 427 all-purpose yards. Persch also scored all four of the Braves’ touchdowns that night. And through three non-league games, he’s found the end zone four different ways: a TD run, a TD catch, a kick return TD and a punt return TD.
“He’s just a clutch player,” said Pequea Valley junior Nick Lacock, who has seven sacks in three games.
“It’s encouraging when you watch a guy like that who gives it 100 percent on every single play.”
And Persch never takes a play off.
“If something needs to get done on the field, I want to help things get done out there,” said Persch, who is fifth in the league in rushing with 350 yards, and has eight receptions for 154 yards. That’s 11.7 yards per carry and 19.3 yards per catch, by the way, so the kid is making big plays.
In fact, all six of Persch’s touchdowns are from way downtown: 37-yard catch, 95-yard kick return, 64-yard run, 20-yard run, 50-yard run and 41-yard punt return, meaning his average TD covers 51 yards.
“I do put a lot of pressure on myself,” Persch said. “But it’s only because I want to perform and because I want to help the team. It’s not that all the guys are counting on me, but I think they know that if something needs to be done – if we need a big play – I want to get it done.”
And more times than not, Persch has delivered, like in the Hamburg game, when he did everything but sell popcorn at halftime.
And like last Saturday against Fleetwood, when he broke off a 41-yard punt return for a score, helping the Braves build a 24-0 lead at the break – a lead that evaporated when Fleetwood scored 32 unanswered second-half points and won 32-24, handing Pequea Valley its 10th loss in a row since the Braves beat Fleetwood in Week 3 last year, snapping Pequea Valley’s 26-game losing streak.
“We knew early on that Sean could be a kid that we could build around, but I don’t think we expected this,” said Waltman, who played a similar role when he was at Garden Spot, playing quarterback and wideout on offense and corner on defense while returning punts and kicks.
So Waltman has been a major influence on Persch.
“Sean knows football and he cares about football,” Waltman said. “His football knowledge is through the roof. He’s very dedicated and he has a real heart for this. He’s a gift to coach, and I don’t mind saying that I wonder if I’ll ever coach another kid like him at Pequea Valley in the years to come. He’s just a special kid.”
A multi-purpose, multi-tasking kid who never takes a play off, and, more than anything, is dedicated to helping Pequea Valley do something a little more often: Win.
