On Friday morning, people will be pouring their first cup of the day, carrying it and their buttered muffin to the table and opening their paper to the sports section.

Or perhaps they will prop their sports page on the treadmill as they break through the 27th minute.

They will see the final score, Central Dauphin 56, Manheim Township 12, and think to themselves, "Boy, Township got drilled!"

Not true.

Oh yes, numbers don't lie. But neither do they tell the entire truth.

Which is, the Blue Streaks (13-6), defiant in defeat, made the four-time state team champion Rams (19-0) work for nearly every victory.

And made CD look bad in the process.

"I'm happy with the effort. I'm not satisfied with the performance," said Streaks coach Tim Rice. "Any time you get stomped 56-12 it's not a good thing.

"It was a good night for our program. It was nice to be here in this kind of environment," Rice continued. "We saw where we need to get to and I thought, with the young team that we have, they really handled it well."

The numbers within the numbers tell you that Township was within six points, at 18-12, halfway through the evening.

But with the engine room of the Ram lineup taking charge, CD swept the final seven bouts to win its state-record 92nd-straight dual meet.

Winning nine of the 12 contested bouts, CD romped in five: tech falls from Austin Rose (138) and Garrett Peppleman (152) and falls from Zach Elvin (106), Colton Peppleman (160) and Dorian Spradlin (182).

The other four wins came at some expense.

In his first match at 126 pounds after competing at 132 all year, Tyson Dippery was extended to the max by Scott Lopez before taking a 10-2 major decision.

Leading 6-1, it took all Dippery had to avoid a Lopez takedown in the second period.

Lopez carried the match to a rapidly tiring Dippery in the third, but Dippery hit two low-shot takedowns off restarts, to amass the final total.

Then Shyheim Brown, also in his first appearance at 132 after being at 138, took a 7-2 lead after a period and held on to defeat Alex Smith 9-5.

"We pushed the pace the whole time," said Rice. "We were flying around the third period, they were backing up, trying just to hang on."

Township won two of its three bouts in the third period.

At 113 Matt Grossmann opened up to score six third-period points and knock off Jeremy Schwartz, 7-4.

Schwartz had defeated Grossmann 4-2 last year when the Rams hung a 54-7 quarterfinal loss on the Streaks.

At 145 Adam Smith took a 1-0 lead on Nick Varndell on a second-period escape, then stuffed Varndell for the last 15 seconds, picking up three back points for a 4-0 final.

At 126 Cortlandt Schuyler rolled six for the Streaks, cradling Evan Davis off a restart and pinning him in 1:34 for Township's other win.

The one constant, besides Township going all out every match, was the Rams scoring off tilts.

"That's what they do," said Rice. "They like to get up 5-0 and coast. We couldn't put ourselves in a 5-0 hole and we did that a couple times."

When they scored the first takedown, the Rams used their tilts to take 5-0 leads in seven of their wins.

Central Dauphin will face Mechanicsburg for the AAA championship Saturday at 1:30 p.m. at Milton Hershey's Spartan Center.

Mechanicsburg roared back from a 22-6 deficit to shave Big Spring, 32-31.

In the second-to-last bout of the night, at 220, Bryton Barr took Josh Stewart down at will, scoring a tech fall (24-7) in just under five minutes to clinch the Wildcats' win.

Concurrent with the championship match, Township will face Big Spring for third place.

dbyrne@lnpnews.com