Call it Butler County’s Believe It or Not. Or the Butler Eagle’s Twilight Zone.

No two sports events are identical, but some stand out more than others for various reasons. There are eye-popping performances, unbelievable upsets, and downright fascinating sequences — and that’s just the start.

Go ahead and enter the sporting sideshow, and read about some feats that might sound too spectacular to imagine.

Points Frenzy

Mars boys basketball coach Rob Carmody has seen his fair share of buzzer-beaters. Ben Perdziola’s tip-in before the horn to claim a section title against rival Hampton in 2017 and Andrew Recchia’s make to down Moon come to mind specifically.

“Those things kind of go down in the lore of our program,” Carmody said. “But, I mean, as far as just the craziest sequence of basketball? So, 2018, we are losing to West Allegheny on the road by 10 points with 25 seconds left.

“What are the chances of winning that basketball game?”

Turns out, better than you’d think.

Carmody’s son, Robby Carmody, knocked down a three-pointer. The Planets fouled, then the shooter missed it from the charity stripe. The younger Carmody collected the rebound, ran the length of the floor, and put another trey up.

“As he’s shooting it, he gets fouled,” Coach Carmody said. “Makes the three-pointer, makes the free throw. We foul a kid, he misses the free throw, and Robby goes down and makes a three-pointer to send the game to overtime. Then, we won in overtime.

“He literally scored 10 points in 25 seconds to put a game into overtime that seemingly was lost.”

Coach Carmody goes back and watches the feat on Hudl every now and then, still in awe that it happened. He remembers the shocked silence that fell over the hosts’ gym.

“I just can’t even believe that we pulled it off,” he said. “It was just crazy.”

Wait, What?

Frustration can mount playing a group loaded with as much talent as the Mars boys lacrosse team has. Planets coach Bob Marcoux recalls an opposing parent vocally expressing theirs — one he had to peek into the bleachers to believe.

“This mom was just over the top in criticizing the refs,” he said of a game a few years back. “Finally, it was the end of the game — we won, I think, something like 19-1, it was in that range — and she yelled at the last call, ‘I hope you’re happy! You cost these boys that game!

“Either it was by far the worst refereeing job ever or she was watching a different game than everybody else.”

Kicked Out

Fouling out with — that can’t be — just four fouls?

Keep your calculator in your pocket. Mark Maier, now Butler’s girls basketball coach, recounted the oddity.

Maier was a senior and the leading scorer on the Golden Tornado’s boys hoops team, which was facing Farrell in what wound up being a crucial section matchup in 1988. Butler had beaten the Steelers at home earlier in the schedule, part of the Golden Tornado’s perfect record through eight section games at that time.

With a few minutes to go in the third frame, Maier was sitting on the bench — in his No. 31 jersey — beside an assistant coach. His teammate and the crew’s point guard, Frank Pugliese — wearing No. 13 — fouled one of the hosts’ players on a breakaway layup. The referee headed to the scorer’s table to document the infraction, but a mix-up burdened Maier, who wasn’t in the game, with the foul.

“I heard on the P.A. system, ‘Foul on Mark Maier, his fourth foul,’” Maier recalled. “I turned to our JV coach and I said, ‘Coach, they called that foul on me!’ ... (Mark) Jula, my head coach, gets wind of it, he goes nuts, and they wouldn’t change it.”

Maier was whistled for a foul with 2:03 and the game knotted at 58 apiece.

“It wasn’t my fifth foul that fouled me out, it was my fourth,” Maier said. “That’s a unique, odd one. I fouled out with four fouls.”

The lead changed hands 19 times in the contest. In the fourth quarter, the scoreboard was level on seven occasions. The Steelers earned a tight, 64-60 victory and eventually closed out section play a game better than Butler did.

“It would’ve been a huge feather in our cap to say we swept Farrell,” Maier said.

Why They Play The Game

From a state playoff upset over WPIAL Class 2A champion Seton LaSalle, the Karns City baseball team returned home to fanfare.

“Without us even knowing, they set up a little kind of parade for us, just (for) going that far into a state playoff,” Gremlins coach Josh “Sluggo” Smith said. “There was people lined up the whole way up through Chicora, just because they heard the news.”

The moment wasn’t too big for an eager Karns City bunch, who exited the bus to North Allegheny High School and made a beeline to warm up in the batting cages.

“I said, ‘Hey, fellas, we made it. We lost (to Redbank Valley in the District 9 title game) and made it this far. We’ve got nothing to lose. We’re not expected to win this game,’” Smith said. “The toughest dog to beat is one that’s back is against the wall. That was our mentality.”

Standout senior Mallick Metcalfe worked six innings on the mound and slapped a key triple in a 2-1 win — the Gremlins’ first in the state tournament since 1996.

“Just the bond that we had after the game, and the dogpile,” Smith said. “You almost, as a coach, you want to be respectful and act like you’ve done it before, but this program’s only done it one other time. ... Every game after the District 9 game was uncharted territory for a lot of us.”

Points Frenzy (Part II)

Over the final four minutes of the fourth quarter of a game against Union in 2022, Karns City’s Taite Beighley went nuclear — netting 24 points in the short span.

“We were down, like 15 or 20 points,” Karns City boys hoops coach Zach Kepple said. “It was one of those nights where they played a really good zone defense against us, and we couldn’t really get anything going.

“I know at one point, I just said, ‘We’re to the point where we just need to start shooting and hoping. And Taite started shooting and he started making everything.”

Beighley was sinking tries from the volleyball line and, soon after, the Knights adjusted their defense to guard him one-on-one. Kepple countered by setting two high screens and letting his then-sophomore threat choose to go off either. Frustration set in for Union. Beighley even converted an and-one trey.

“He shot it and it was going in,” Kepple said. “And it was just one of those things where, if you didn’t see it, it’s hard to believe that it happened. ... He was in a different zone.”

The Gremlins wound up winning the game, 61-57. Beighley finished with 38 points.

Not This Time

Seeking Joe Sherwin’s first District 9 football crown, a few members of the Karns City coaching staff stopped to grab a bite on the way to the the Gremlins’ title matchup with undefeated Brookville in 2020.

“This older lady from Brookville asks us if we thought we had a chance tonight,” said Kepple, a Karns City assistant. “We’re like, ‘Yeah, we’re going to go up there and give it our best effort. And she said, ‘Yeah, you guys shouldn’t even show up. You don’t have a chance.’”

Based off the Gremlins’ encounter with the Raiders a little over a month earlier — a lopsided 44-0 defeat where Karns City tossed six picks — that woman’s confidence was warranted.

“We went up to Brookville in the regular season and pretty much anything that could go wrong, did go wrong for us,” Kepple said. “They just absolutely handed it to us.”

The Raiders entered the rematch averaging 45 points per game. This time, the Gremlins were clicking, even with a pandemic-shortened schedule.

“Our defense was just spectacular,” Kepple said. “We came up with some big stops. They recovered a fumble on a punt from us on our 30, and we got four consecutive stops to get the ball back.”

After that turnover on downs, Kaden Scherer — who had hit pay dirt on 65-yard jet sweep scamper in the second quarter — kept the game-winning drive alive with a 10-yard surge on a fourth-and-eight. Owen Colwelll’s 27-yard field goal with four ticks left on the clock earned Karns City a 16-14 win.

Comeback Effort

Eric Kasperowicz’ Pine-Richland Rams were left for dead on multiple occasions in the 2020 PIAA Class 5A semifinal against Governor Mifflin.

Kasperowicz, who took the helm at Mars prior to last season and led the Planets to the postseason, only let doubt creep in in one instance. He remembered the undesirable situation of being down 22 points with six minutes remaining in the third frame.

“It really, really wasn’t a feeling of despair ever — until maybe in the third quarter,” Kasperowicz said. “Because we were undefeated. ... We were ranked No. 1 in the state from Week 1 of the year and (were) really unmatched the whole year.

“At that point, there was a little bit of, like, ‘Wow, I don’t know if we’re going to be able to do this.”

The eventual state champion Rams rallied, scoring 29 of the contest’s final 32 points — against standout tailback Nick Singleton, too. Singleton was last year’s Big Ten Freshman of the Year for Penn State.

“We had a big stop at the end,” Kasperowicz said. “They pitched the ball to Nick Singleton, who’s going to be a first-round draft choice — to drive the ball in the fourth quarter and get a first down — and Miguel Jackson tackled him in the backfield for a loss and won us the game.”