CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Wheeling Central Catholic struggled to find an answer for Clay-Battelle’s passing attack for the first three possessions of Friday night’s Class A state championship.
The Cee-Bees never came up with a solution for how to slow down Maroon Knights’ tailback Kade Koroneos or his team’s rushing attack.
As a result, Koroneos set a new state championship mark for rushing yardage with 415 and added seven touchdowns, while Wheeling Central amassed 560 of its 623 yards on the ground to outscore Clay-Battelle, 56-34, at UC Stadium at Laidley Field.
“He’s a workhorse. He always has been,” Central head coach Mike Young said of Koroneos. ”He has great balance and great vision. Our line up front would be the ones to tell you how great he is, and he’ll tell you he got here from them, but they’ve worked hard every day. This past month has been unbelievable, but they never stopped working.”
The result gives Wheeling Central its 13th state championship and 12th since 2000.
Making its first appearance in a state title game, No. 3 Clay-Battelle (12-2) showed no sign of stage fright and got a 13-yard touchdown pass from Corey Coen to Cody Clovis for the first points. Coen was stopped short of the goal line on a two-point rushing attempt, leaving CBHS with a 6-0 lead.
Koroneos finished off the first drive for Wheeling Central (10-2) with a 1-yard touchdown run and Clayton Perry knocked home the point-after kick to give the top seed a one-point advantage.
Coen found a streaking Braden Ponceroff in stride for an 80-yard touchdown and the Cee-Bees’ junior sign-caller ran in the two-point conversion to leave the Maroon Knights facing a 14-7 deficit at the 3:39 mark of the opening quarter.
Consecutive intentional grounding penalties assessed against Central resulted in the Maroon Knights facing third-and-55 from its own 3 on the ensuing series, and after punting, Clay-Battelle took the game’s first two-score lead on Coen’s 40-yard touchdown pass to Clovis on the first play of the second quarter. Central stopped Coen on the two-point try, leaving the Cee-Bees with a 20-7 advantage.
“It was Corey making a bunch of plays in the passing game and our receivers,” Clay-Battelle head coach Aaron LaPoe said. “I’ve been telling people we have elite hands. Cody Clovis and Braden Ponceroff can catch anything. We don’t call them 50/50 balls. We call them 100/0 balls, because they’re getting them 100 percent of the time. That gave us a lot of belief and fire early on and made the game entertaining for everybody else.”
The Maroon Knights needed only five plays to get back to within one possession and Koroneos reached the end zone on a 10-yard run to create a six-point deficit for his team.
After Young’s team produced its first defensive stop, Koroneos ripped off a 31-yard run to the Cee-Bees’ 1, and accounted for his third TD from that distance to put Central back on top by one at 21-20 with 5:45 to play in the first half.
“So much of it was heart and soul and believing in each other,” Young said of his team overcoming the deficit.
Another stop helped Central regain possession with just outside 3 minutes remaining in the half, and the Maroon Knights capitalized and got Koroneos’ 11-yard touchdown run for a 28-20 lead they took into halftime.
Koroneos had 208 yards on 20 attempts through two quarters.
“We just put our heads down like we did all year, kept working and made the adjustments,” Koroneos said. “Everybody kept working so hard. It’s a team effort and it’s amazing.”
Central picked up where it left off to start the second half, though this time quarterback Nico Kusic accounted for the touchdown on a 45-yard run that left Clay-Battelle facing a 15-point deficit 1:05 into the third quarter.
Central continued to display the defensive improvement that allowed it to start slowing down the Cee-Bees, and after forcing a punt, the Maroon Knights got a 55-yard run from Kusic to setup Koroneos’ 3-yard rushing TD on the next play.
The Maroon Knights looked set to make it a four-score lead when Kusic completed a 48-yard pass to Max Olejasz, who was on the verge of scoring but fumbled and was ruled to be out of the side of the end zone when he recovered, creating a touchback and giving the Cee-Bees possession.
Coen then completed passes of 31 yards to Clovis and 41 to Ponceroff before scoring on a 1-yard touchdown run, though he was stopped short on the two-point attempt, leaving Central with a 42-26 advantage with 1:55 remaining in the third.
Koroneos had consecutive rushes of 27 and 9 yards on the ensuing possession, the latter of which marked his sixth score of the night and upped his team’s lead to 49-26.
🎤 from Mike Young after his ninth state championship. pic.twitter.com/WAMudmhTZJ
— TheWVSSAC (@TheWVSSAC) December 6, 2025
“We just wore them down by running and running,” Koroneos said, “and that’s what led us to a win.”
A 6-yard Koroneos touchdown run with 6:54 remaining marked his seventh TD, while Coen found Ponceroff for a 35-yard touchdown pass to cap the scoring in a game with 1,087 total yards.
“These kids played for four quarters tonight and they had to,” Young said.
Kusic added 153 rushing yards on 12 carries and completed 3-of-3 passes for 63 yards.
Central finished with an average of 10.7 yards per play.
“They work their tails off to do what’s right,” Young said. “They’re sometimes criticized, because people say well you’re a private school and you should be this or should be that. We are who we are — we’re Wheeling Central.”
The Cee-Bees averaged 9.1 yards per play, but were out-gained by 159 yards.
“They’re big and strong and they’re fast at every position,” LaPoe said of the Maroon Knights. “I have 26 kids and they have 40. They played their line one way. I can’t do that. We have talent and we put up a good fight, but it’s almost like you’re playing a Double-A team.“
Coen was 11 for 23 with 323 yards, four touchdowns and a pair of interceptions,
Ponceroff finished with five receptions for 198 yards, while Clovis had five catches for 109 yards.
Caleb Hall rushed 12 times for 103 yards with a long of 47 in defeat.
“I’m going to go in there and tell them and there are 4 billion people in a bunch of other countries that don’t even know we played a football game,” LaPoe said. “What they have lasting from this is all the memories they made. All the big plays, that’s what they’re going to talk about 20 years from now when they’re with their buddies hanging around a fire.”