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There are two sides to every coin, and both were amply displayed Friday night in Manheim.
Manheim Central closed out a 10-0 regular season with a 49-0 Section Two victory over Garden Spot, which finished 0-10.
One team was left to celebrate, the other to ruminate.
One wants to see its season last forever. The other must feel like it actually did.
"This team has a shot to really do a good job (in the postseason)," said Barons coach Mike Williams, whose team secured the top seed in the upcoming District Three Class AAA playoffs. "The next phase is the district championship. Certainly we have a shot. There are good teams out there, but if we play good football, we have a shot."
Quarterback Justin Gorman, who played only a half, went 12-for-13 through the air for 183 yards and two touchdowns, and ran seven times for 141 yards and three scores.
The Barons also recorded their fourth straight shutout, and their sixth of the season.
Afterward — after the Barons built a 42-0 halftime lead and the teams sped through a Mercy Rule-impacted second half — Spot coach Matt Zamperini gathered his players around him on the field, as Manheim celebrated its success by shooting off fireworks.
Some of the Spartans were in tears. A few of them stopped to shake Zamperini's hand as the huddle broke, and the coach received them warmly.
"I just told them, 'Guys, you can probably learn more about yourself from losing than you do winning,' " Zamperini said later. "We've got to go back to work, get ready for next year and get back to winning."
The Spartans, hit hard by graduation after going 8-5 last year, had seen this year's quarterback, John Armbrust, kayoed by a broken thumb in midstream. They had lost their top three receivers with knee injuries.
Zamperini did not wish to make excuses. At the same time, he said, "That makes something that's hard even harder."
But even as the weeks passed and the losses piled up, Zamperini said his players "kept it together."
"We had our best practices this week," he said. "You look around, and an 0-10 team will blow up from the inside out. They didn't do that. They were able to keep working and handle it with class."
The Barons drove 60 yards in eight plays after receiving the opening kickoff, with Gorman accounting for the final eight. Spot then fumbled, and Central marched 46 yards in nine plays. Joe Gruber took it in from the 2.
Things snowballed in the second quarter. Gorman fired a 50-yard TD bomb to Daniel Trafford, who was streaking down the right sideline, then ran 36 and 72 yards for scores. And with just 17.8 seconds left in the half, Gorman rolled right and hit Dakota Royer for a 13-yard touchdown.
Joe Brubaker accounted for the second half's only points by returning a third-quarter punt 50 yards for a score.
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