Last team standing.

Each year, at the start of the high school football season, we wonder which team that’s going to be.

It takes a lot.

Obviously, it starts with talent. You have to have the players to get to the playoffs and win once you’re there. It takes leadership, too. You need certain guys on the field to lead a team back from adversity.

The coaches have to trust the players and vice versa.

Seneca Valley is our last team standing. And they’ve demonstrated an intangible that’s helped the Raiders become that team.

Gumption.

Seneca Valley has shown plenty of that during the past two weeks.

When the Raiders won their regular season finale at Norwin, they figured they earned a home playoff game. Due to the WPIAL tiebreaker system, they did not. They had to face Central Catholic in Fox Chapel.

Seneca Valley fell behind 14-0 in that game. Coach Ron Butschle benched starting quarterback Gabe Lawson because the offense was struggling.

Bold move to do that in a high school playoff game. It was an even bolder move to put him back in — and Lawson led the Raiders to a come-from-behind 15-14 victory.

Running back Matt Stanger goes down with an injury late in the season and Jake Mineweaser steps into the lineup. Mineweaser has a couple of 100-yard games and Butschle opts to stay with the hot hand rather than go back to Stanger once the latter healed up.

Mineweaser winds up carrying the ball nearly 30 times for 147 yards in SV’s 31-14 victory at North Allegheny last week. Stanger, incidentally, had a 31-yard run late in that game.

The Raiders fell behind 7-0 at NA, allowing a 63-yard return of the opening kickoff, taking a penalty for a late hit at the end of that play, and watching the Tigers score only 41 seconds into the game.

Seneca Valley responds with a 75-yard scoring drive on its first possession to knot the game. It added touchdown drives of 91 and 94 yards against one of the top defenses in the WPIAL.

The Raiders have the best defense in WPIAL 6A. Just ask NA. The Tigers averaged 37 points per game this season. They managed 24 in two games against Seneca Valley.

Finally, the Raiders are trying to pull off an unprecedented feat this weekend: Defeat all three teams that defeated you in the regular season, back-to-back-to-back.

Crazy stuff.

What a route this would be to a WPIAL football championship. Seneca Valley, by the way, has never won the WPIAL football crown.

Its opponent this weekend — Pine-Richland — is the defending WPIAL and state champion.

Can this story get any better?

We’ll see.

John Enrietto is sports editor of the Butler Eagle