Despite Getting Bounced By West Catholic In Opening Round Of PIAA-3A State Playoffs, Lancaster Catholic Sees ‘Trajectory Change’ As Crusaders Conclude Turnaround Season Against Defending State Champs
Written by: Andy Herr on March 8, 2026
If you would’ve seen their name appear on the statewide bracket as it did this year and your only point of reference to use was that of a history book and nothing else, you likely would’ve thought this was just another, ho-hum season for them. After all, their 22 state playoff appearances tops the list compared to all other Lancaster-Lebanon League schools. Then again, if you know the internal dynamics that were at play, nothing could’ve been further from the truth.
Where to begin when it comes to trying to illustrate this remarkable season for Lancaster Catholic? Well, for starters, perhaps we need to rewind back to just the last few seasons alone and depart from there.
If you’re talking royalty in the ranks of Lancaster-Lebanon League boys’ basketball, there aren’t many other programs that outshine the Crusaders. Section titles? They got 19 of ‘em– tied for most along with their city neighbors a few blocks away in McCaskey. League championships? Two of those, but check out their 26 times making it into the L-L playoffs straight up, a mark which ties them for second-most all-time in conference history. District titles? Yep, those have been won too. Five times over as a matter of fact, also at the top of the L-L list in that regard as well. Besides that, they of course also own the greatest season ever found in league history when referencing that perfect 35-0 state championship bunch found in 2003.
To be sure, seeing the Crusaders finish well below water these last handful of seasons with losing record upon losing record has been an outlier for this program that’s been built rock-solidly upon a fierce winning tradition. Not only that, but last year’s 2-20 overall mark was the program’s worst season since the inception of the L-L League which dates all the way back to 1973.
Then, as if their 0-3 start to this 2025-26 season which was punctuated with a 30-point loss against a 1A outfit in York Country Day hadn’t already been arduous enough, the Crusaders were dealt another curveball.
If you’re building a Mount Rushmore of L-L League boys’ basketball coaches, Joe Klazas deserves to be on that rock, or at the very least on the short list for names to be carved out upon it. Hard to argue when you consider that Klazas inherited a sports car left behind by then head man Bill Southward, the head coach in charge of that aforementioned 2003 club, before Klazas made the Crusaders’ machine into a Rolls Royce of a local high school basketball program while en route to becoming the conference’s fifth all-time winningest coach in accruing 352 victories in leading his alma mater from 2005 until early December of this year. There, after already having to sit out the 2023-24 season in lieu of health-related issues, Klazas decided it was time for the torch to be passed to someone else just past the onset of this season. Fortunately for him, one of the players he helped groom into a young man under his tutelage was there when duty called.
Typically, there’s a waiting period involved when it comes to these sorts of things. And hey, when you yourself only graduated high school in 2017, getting dibs on a varsity level coaching gig – much less your own alma mater, much less the one the likes of a blueblood in that of Lancaster Catholic – is rare to put it mildly. However, Cole Portz wasn’t totally blind coming into this deal sight-unseen necessarily.
Remember that 2024 season which caused Klazas to step aside briefly? It was Portz who took the reigns during that season and ended up piloting the Crusaders to a respectable 8-14 record that year all things being considered.
This time though, there was no “acting” title involved. This was his time. His team.
Which leads us all the way back in seeing the Crusaders reach the PIAA state tournament. Yes, while some on the outside might’ve scoffed at Lancaster Catholic’s 10-16 overall record heading into Saturday afternoon’s 3A state tourney first round affair at West Philadelphia High School, there’s obviously so much more that went into this ride to get here.
Again, while the overall record might seem pedestrian, that’s doing these Crusaders an incredible disservice.
Chief among them, how about taking that 0-3 start out the chute when all things seemed shrouded in doom and gloom before turning that narrative on its head in going 5-5 in L-L Section Three play, highlighted by a sweep of Lampeter-Strasburg and a 1-1 split against ELCO, an achievement which paved the way for the Crusaders to make it back into the league playoffs for the first time since 2021, and eventually the District 3 and state playoffs dating back to that very same season as well.
So, yeah. Go ahead and chuckle and snicker if you feel you must at a team that hit for the trifecta in reaching all three levels of postseason play despite still being a somewhat considerable number of games under .500 overall. But if you do, never has a case of failing to judge book by its cover alone been more apropos when describing the turnaround season that Portz and these Crusaders have put together in bringing one of the league’s foremost franchises back into the primary discussion.
Their prize for reaching the state tournament you may ask? Engaging with the defending state champions, winners of two of the last three as a matter of fact, as Lancaster Catholic drew Philadelphia West Catholic on Saturday afternoon for state lid-lifter, ironically enough against a Burrs’ crew that they themselves were only at .500 on the season coming in at 12-12 in their own right.
However, much in the same vein as their counterparts on this day, simply looking at the Burrs’ dead even mark on the season and not thinking anything more of them would also prove to be an equally grave mistake. That’s a lesson that the state, Lancaster Catholic most of all, soon discovered as Saturday unfolded.
If early breathing room was what either team desired coming out of the starting blocks, it would be the team hailing from the esteemed Philadelphia Catholic League who would be the beneficiary of those honors.
There, after first knocking down a floater in the lane which had awarded his team the 5-2 buffer early on, West Catholic’s Rakim Johnson, a baker’s-dozen point scorer on the afternoon, then proceeded to knock down two freebies at the charity stripe which then ushered the Burrs out to a 9-2 lead with the Crusaders prompted into calling an early timeout to try and stem the tide with 3:28 left in the opening frame.
Following that impromptu stoppage however, much like their season in a microcosm, Lancaster Catholic continued to keep on swinging.
For that, while on the heels of an Anthony Brody triple which had preceded a deep two from just inside the arc by way of fellow Lancaster Catholic senior guard, Colton Hegener, the Crusaders had rushed back to within one, 11-10, before the dust would finally settle on a West Catholic 13-11 cushion after one quarter of play, albeit while the school from just a few blocks up the street having to deal with the loud and heavily-partisan Lancaster Catholic contingent who had traveled east to support their team on this day.
But forget about just being within a whisker. Lancaster Catholic wanted to prove those late first quarter exploits were anything but some sort of minor fluke.
In that regard, Rowan Demarco, arguably the headliner in terms of best freshmen the Lancaster-Lebanon League boys’ basketball scene has discovered this season, tallied two quick buckets within the painted area to knot things up at 15-apiece as the Crusaders’ 6’4 freshman big man was on his way to finish with team-high scoring honors on the day in posting a 14-point showing.
Yet just when this Catholic squad might’ve felt good about themselves, it was the other Catholic squad who wanted to dash those dreams to smithereens.
Case in point, a 3-ball dialed up by way of West Catholic 6’4 junior sniper, Xavier Fauntroy, making it a 22-15 Burrs’ advantage with 5:41 left before the halftime break to put the finishing touches on this sudden 7-0 West Catholic salvo which again triggered another Crusaders’ timeout to try and stop the bleeding.
From there however, the Lancaster Catholic hill to climb only grew steeper and more arduous to climb over the course of the ensuing few minutes as a steal and finish at the cup courtesy of Rakim Johnson upped the Burrs’ margin to the largest it had been, 26-17, before Johnson then knocked down a triple in transition on the ensuing trip down the floor which pushed the West Catholic lead into double figures with the first half now winding down.
And once it did, even despite the 32-21 West Catholic lead possessed after the opening 16 minutes of play come the halftime recess, Lancaster Catholic had acquitted themselves quite well in playing against one of the best franchises found on this side of the state, especially within these lower classification levels most of all.
Suffice to say, while they may not have maximized it throughout the initial two frames on Saturday afternoon while opting to try and get out and run on the break, West Catholic, whether by instruction or purely by happenstance proceeded to lean on their clear advantage physically possessed inside to try and bully the undersized Crusaders into a bit of submission.
As if to be right on cue, West Catholic’s Yasai Rozier stepped right up to the forefront in that regard as the Burrs’ muscular 6’3 junior big man, the game-high scorer on the day who netted himself a 21-point clip, rattled off three consecutive buckets inside to help begin the second half proceedings, a framework and attitude which then saw Florida Gulf Coast commit, Kingston Wheatley, proceed to score his first points of the afternoon with his own bucket inside shortly thereafter as the Burrs’ 6’7 senior notched the first two of his eventual 17-point outing, all of which exclusively came inside the final two quarters.
As mentioned though, Wheatley was only just then getting started.
In fact, after knocking down a triple which allowed the Burrs to flirt with the idea of owning a 20-point lead at 47-28 with 2:27 left to play in the third, Wheatley would follow his own trifecta up with a steal and finish at the cup to cement those dreams into reality while also making it a 50-28 West Catholic advantage with now inside of two minutes outstanding in the penultimate quarter of play.
And while Anthony Brody’s second trey of the day would help Lancaster Catholic get back inside the 20-point bubble at 50-31, a Colton Hegener triple, a three-point addition to the senior Crusader’s final game in a purple-clad uniform which ended in a 9-point performance, made it a 52-34 ballgame before the dust would finally settle on the third quarter with West Catholic possessing the spoils of a 54-34 lead.
Yet while some might’ve assumed with all of eight minutes remaining that the eventual outcome here was nothing more than a foregone formality, good luck telling that to the Crusaders, namely Rowan Demarco most of all.
As mentioned, with a promising and extremely bright future ahead of him in his upcoming Lancaster Catholic days, Demarco’s upward ascension only continued in this, his first state playoff game, with a Demarco-led four-point swing which then trimmed the lead down to a 56-40 difference with 5:50 remaining.
However, that would be all the closer the Crusaders would get for the remainder of the afternoon.
From there, it was West Catholic’s turn to put the icing on the cake which the Burrs did in style by first seeing Kingston Wheatley climb the ladder and throw down a powerful one-handed dunk off an alley-oop feed which then made it a 60-40 West Catholic lead before another Burrs’ dunk, this one via Xavier Fauntroy, made it a 72-44 contest with time running out.
Yet before time could expire, the loudest Lancaster Catholic cheer of the day came when Lancaster Catholic senior big man, Max Gochenour, proceeded to chip in a bucket from point-blank range in the waning stages, a well-deserved moment for Gochenour and crew with the Crusaders’ memorable season just about set to expire.
And once it did, while the scoreboard would read out a commanding 72-47 West Catholic triumph over Lancaster Catholic in this one, much like the Crusaders’ entire body of work, there was more to it than what may meet the naked eye.
Afterwards, mere moments after emerging from his team’s somber locker room after addressing them for the final time this season, Lancaster Catholic head coach Cole Portz was able to look back and reflect on what truly had been a whirlwind journey for both he and the troops he led into battle this entire season.
“Completely unexpected. Nothing about it was planned,” Portz said when asked postgame Saturday afternoon to harken back to early December after learning that his own coach, Joe Klazas, was now turning ownership of the program over to him full-time in stepping aside with finality. “That L-S game, I didn’t even find out I was coaching that game til about 2:30 that afternoon. The only reason I remember that is that because I got a really bad haircut and I wouldn’t have done that if I knew I would’ve been coaching later that night,” Portz said in good humor. “But yeah. I was in the dark just like everyone else.”
But to he and his team’s credit, even while beset with a 0-3 record out of the gate, even while trying to erase last year’s 2-20 mark, even while now having to juggling the aspect of their long-time head coach exiting after the season itself had just started, for a year that could’ve easily veered far off the rails for a variety of different reasons, this Catholic train did more than just simply staying on the tracks.
“It was different,” Portz said regarding what changed internally after witnessing all those moving pieces finally settling down and into place. “That’s just a testament to our seven seniors who said that they didn’t want to go out and have it be the same way it was last year. And to be honest, it was trending in that same direction,” he added bluntly.
“We made some minor adjustments to how we did things with the lineup, some X’s and O’s stuff, things like that, but it was really just the guys receiving all of that so well…We knew the trajectory had to change and they changed it,” Portz remarked pridefully. “It started with our camaraderie in the locker room and on the bus. I mean, when we lost to Trinity (in the District 3 semifinals), you could just tell it was a different feel in the locker room than when we lost to York Country Day by 30 and we were 0-3 at the time,” Portz continued. “We just believed that we could compete, the guys wanted to compete, and we competed very well this whole season.”
“Big picture, we were 2-20 last year. This year, we made leagues, we made districts, we made states. We won as many playoff games this year as we did regular season games all last year,” Portz remarked. “So, yeah. There’s lots of things for this group to be proud of. I’m proud of them and just happy for them.”
Then again, while Portz served admirably in steering this ship once again this season as he did already two years ago, the Catholic High job is technically still open. Rest assured, whether he was auditioning for the position over the course of the last three months or not, Portz most certainly deserves to have his name near the top of the selection list if he chooses to take a stab at it long-term.
“I’d like to continue on, but ultimately I have trust in the school that they will do what’s best for the program and I trust God that he’ll put me in the position where I’ll be most needed in life,” Portz said with humility and grace far beyond his 27 years of age when asked about the future. “We say it before every game. ‘Have the serenity to accept the things you cannot change, the courage to change the things you can, and the wisdom to know the difference.’ That’s one thing that I certainly tried my best to do this season. There’s certainly mistakes I might’ve made, but that’s all out of my hands now so I’m not going to worry about it too much,” Portz concluded with a soft smile.
But no matter who gets the keys to the Berger Gymnasium doors in leading this Catholic boys’ program here moving forward, there’s ample reason to believe that this brand name is once again on the way back up.
“Yeah, 100%,” Portz said in regard to being bullish on the Crusaders’ future no matter what. “I mean, you have Rowan (Demarco) who’s a freshman, Henry Wentz, a sophomore, who started a number of games for us down the stretch. That’s the one thing you can never coach is height,” he quipped of those two frontline underclassmen that stand at 6’4 and 6’2 respectively. “And our young guys too. I think our JV team was like 17-4 this year if I’m not mistaken, so it’s all very exciting and promising. But, we still have to take it one day at a time while trying to get better each and every day.”
And while this year’s 10-17 final record may one day ultimately fade from memory as being nothing more than two numbers being separated by a simple dash, it doesn’t necessarily to have to meet that eventual fate. No, for this may just be the first building blocks set into place in building this mighty program back up to where it rightfully belongs locally. For that, this Lancaster Catholic season deserves to be remembered. As this group showed, there’s far more to a team’s story than what you may see on just the surface.
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