Central York boys, Dallastown girls take different paths to repeat league titles

Fifty-two weeks later, the York-Adams League has a pair of repeat basketball champions. But the Central York boys and Dallastown girls took wildly different paths to get here.

One team had been the heavy favorite to win this tournament for seemingly a full year and has played the entire 2023-24 season with a target on its back. The other was able to slide somewhat under the radar while stacking up wins as its reloaded roster proved itself to be championship-caliber.

This week’s action at Red Lion High School was, in some ways, a fitting coronation for both teams. 

Dallastown’s girls went toe-to-toe with two of the league’s best teams and had just enough juice to best Northeastern (45-42 in Tuesday’s semifinals) and York Suburban (34-30 in Thursday’s final). Central York, after a sloppy five-point victory in last weekend’s quarterfinals, bulldozed Littlestown in a 73-35 rout and handled business in Friday’s 63-45 win over York Suburban. That 18-point victory matched the Panthers’ average point differential this season.

Both teams will have byes in next week’s District 3 Class 6A playoffs, and neither plans to be satisfied with only a league title when all is said and done. But these achievements are still well worth celebrating.

Meeting the moment: Central York’s assimilation of young basketball talent is unlike anything York County has seen in years. Jeff Hoke’s Panthers have at least a dozen players who could start for most teams in the area, headlined by a trio of division all-stars. It’s the kind of surplus that can turn into a curse if players aren’t unselfish, the kind that saddles teenagers with the expectation of making history.

That’s why Hoke — a relentlessly energetic fitness equipment salesman from Harrisburg who returned from a coaching hiatus for this specific opportunity in 2020 — found himself getting emotional as his players cut down the net.

“The pressure that they’re under to win is astronomical. They’re 15, 16, 17-year-old kids that everybody expects to win all the time. It’s terrible,” Hoke said. “It’s my job to take that pressure off them. … I cannot let them down. I’m not going to let the world’s pressure get them and the world say, ‘I told you so, they’re not that good.’ Because they are that good.”

And they proved it once again Friday night.

The onslaught of talent begins with 6-foot-7 senior Greg Guidinger, who led the Panthers (22-2) with 26 points Friday. The do-it-all forward became Central York’s all-time leading scorer in December and will likely repeat as Y-A Division I Player of the Year. He’s flanked by junior guard Ben Natal, a third-year starter who reached 1,000 career points last week, and 6-8 junior Ben Rill, who returned to Central York in 2022 after spending his freshman year at a prep school.

But it doesn’t stop there. Sophomores Ryan Brown and Brooklyn Nace are double-digit threats on any given night. Freshman Doug Layer has made starts at point guard and held his own. Junior Saxton Suchanic was a regular starter last season. Sophomore Ryan Jackson and junior Byron Pinckney have only shown glimpses of their potential on the wing. And Hoke has often gone out of his way to praise JoJo Woodard, Nasir Ruppert, Eric Tati and Adzmir Ludvig for what they do in practice on a daily basis.

On Wednesday, with Guidinger sitting out the first quarter for disciplinary reasons, Central York offered a preview of what next year’s lineup might look like. The Panthers scored 19 unanswered points and led 21-5 after eight minutes against Littlestown. Central’s 38-point win over the Bolts was its second-largest victory of the season.

“I think it instilled a little bit of confidence in them, to know that it’s not Greg Guidinger’s team, but this is Central York basketball,” Guidinger said Friday.

The Panthers, as the No. 1 seed in the upcoming District 3 Class 6A tournament, will need only two home wins to reach the title game in Hershey. They’ll return to action this coming Friday against either Red Lion or York High, a pair of D-I foes they’ve already beaten twice. With wins over No. 2-seed Cumberland Valley and No. 5 Central Dauphin also on the ledger, Hoke’s team certainly looks like the favorite on paper.

At this point, high expectations are nothing new for these Panthers. They’ve met the big moment throughout this season, starting with a Dec. 5 win over reigning PIAA champion Reading and continuing throughout their current 15-game winning streak. And they’re ready for whatever lies ahead.

“We hear the noise, especially coming into this game (against Suburban), but that only fuels us,” Guidinger said. “That only drives us, because we know who we are, we’re confident in what we can do, and we’ve been so blessed to stay healthy and continue to get better every single day.”

Reload and repeat: Each of the last two seasons at York-Adams League winter media days, Dallastown girls’ basketball coach Jay Rexroth has labeled somebody else as the Division I favorite.

He was correct about Central York last year, as a senior-laden Panthers squad went 19-2 in the regular season and won the division title outright. But Rexroth’s gritty Wildcats won two of three head-to-head matchups, punctuated by Maggie Groh’s buzzer-beating 3-pointer in the league championship game at York Tech. 

Rexroth’s preseason pick this winter was York High, which returned by far the most production among presumed division contenders. The Bearcats had a double-digit lead in their D-I opener against Dallastown on Dec. 12, but the Wildcats came back for a heart-pounding win. They bested Central York in overtime three days later and remained in first place from there, starting 17-0 and finishing the regular season 20-2 (11-1 in the division, losing only at South Western).

There was no question Dallastown would remain in the mix, as they’ve always been since Rexroth took over the program in 2016. But this team returned only two starters and a young role player from last year’s league champions. Rexroth’s current top seven includes one senior, five juniors and a sophomore.

“If you had asked me in November, ‘is this going to happen to us,’ I wasn’t sure,” Rexroth said Thursday. “I knew we had a chance, but I didn’t think we’d get the whole way here. These kids are amazing.”

Junior Praise Matthews leads the Wildcats with just over 11 points per game. Senior Kiara McNealy anchors the defense. Sophomore Ava Jamison scored a team-high 13 points in Thursday’s final. Junior point guard Alonna Dowell had the game-winning layup against West York in the quarterfinals and the clutch free throws at the end against Suburban. Juniors Harper Poff and Campbell O’Neill chipped in with big 3-pointers of their own this past week.

Dallastown won its three league playoff games by a combined eight points. The Wildcats were in serious danger against West York in the quarterfinals before Dowell’s layup in the waning seconds lifted the D-I champs to a 36-35 triumph. Rexroth’s squad led for most of the night against Northeastern before hanging on to win 45-42. That set up a rematch against Suburban, which had beaten the Wildcats by 18 points exactly two weeks before Thursday’s title bout.

Rexroth, renowned in coaching circles for his tactical chops, switched from a man to zone defense and flustered the Trojans in the first half. Dallastown led 14-10 at the break and pulled ahead 23-10 in the third quarter before Suburban found its rhythm and briefly took a 27-26 advantage. But the Wildcats answered quickly and salted the title away with strong free-throw shooting.

“We talk all the time — when you get to this level … they’re not going away,” Rexroth said. “We knew they’d make a run, and they made a big run, and we always talk about, ‘We’ve got to answer back.’ And we found a way to answer back just enough to get away from them.”

Rexroth’s decorated career started with 17 seasons as the Dallastown boys’ coach. After stepping away, he returned as a girls’ assistant at Dover before spending two years on Jess Weaver’s staff at Suburban. Since returning to his alma mater, Rexroth has led the Dallastown girls to four league titles — 2019, 2020, 2023 and now 2024 against his former colleague.

“Jay’s legendary. He’s the best,” Weaver said. “He’s gonna be the best until somebody takes them down.”

Week to remember: The B-side track to both championship stories was a breakout York Suburban team. After Weaver’s Trojan girls escaped South Western on Tuesday to reach the league final, her younger brother, Mitch Kemp, guided the boys’ squad to a surprising rout of host Red Lion. But both teams ultimately settled for silver medals.

The girls may have been the unofficial tournament favorite after putting the exclamation point on a 21-1 regular season with their Feb. 1 win over Dallastown. Now 23-2, the Trojans will turn their focus to the District 3-5A tournament, where they’re the No. 1 seed and eager to reach the top after making a surprise run to last year’s final.

The York Suburban boys won a combined 15 games in the previous two seasons but will enter this year’s district playoffs 19-6. The turnaround can be attributed in large part to freshman point guard Nasir Barnes, who scored 29 of the Trojans’ 45 points Friday. A deep playoff run as the district tournament’s No. 3 seed will require contributions from a supporting cast that shined much brighter on Wednesday.

“We’ve still got a long season ahead,” Kemp said. “Keep (Friday’s loss) as a learning experience, stay positive and move forward.”

The Trojan girls were one of three YAIAA teams to earn top seeds in the district playoffs, joining Central York’s boys in 6A and Delone Catholic’s girls (20-2) in 4A. Dallastown and Northeastern (21-3) give the league four 20-win girls’ teams, while the York Suburban boys have 19 victories and Littlestown’s boys have 18.

Districts begin Monday and Tuesday, Feb. 19 and 20, and will conclude with title games at Hershey’s Giant Center from Feb. 28 to March 1. The York-Adams League had four silver medalists a year ago. This time, plenty of squads are set to chase gold.

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