HERSHEY, Pa. -- Watching Jeremiah Young run got old for Serra.

Whenever the Steelton-Highspire junior running back touched the ball yesterday, it was the same deafening refrain for Serra -- yard after yard, carry after predictable carry, Young saw to it that Steel-High left the field with a gold trophy and the WPIAL-champion Eagles left with a sense of bewilderment.

Young, who entered the matchup as the leading rusher in the state with 3,052 yards, ran over and around Serra for a PIAA Class A championship game record 292 yards on 45 carries and four touchdowns to lead the Rollers to a 34-15 win against the Eagles at Hersheypark Stadium.

"Jeremiah was unbelievable," Steelton-Highspire coach Rob Diebler said. "Give him a just a little crack, and he can go."

Young found cracks against Serra (15-1) and pushed Steelton-Highspire (13-3) to where no Rollers team had ever been, as the victory gave the school, which has been playing football since 1894, its first PIAA championship.

In front of a mostly Steelton-Highspire partisan crowd of 2,558, Young dazzled. His 28 points scored was a Class A championship-game record, but far more impressive was his yardage total that eclipsed the 271 gained by Southern Columbia back Henry Hynoski against Duquesne in 2005.

"He's a great back and is very shifty," Serra quarterback/free safety T.J. Heatherington said of Young. "When you think you have him, he moves and makes you miss. All the credit to him. He played great."

Young's intentions weren't to gain a spot among the state's individual elite performers -- it just happened to work out that way.

"I wasn't worried about any records," Young said. "I was just worried about winning."

It became apparent early on that Young did not need to worry about much.

The Rollers rolled to a 20-0 lead just more than 10 minutes into the contest, attacking Serra on the ground time and again.

Quarterback Andre Campbell strolled 25 yards for a score, and Young muscled in from the 2 in the first quarter. Young added a 52-yard touchdown run in the opening stages of the second quarter to lift the Rollers to the 20-0 advantage before Serra finally buckled down, only then getting their feet under them.

"They were more ready. I don't know what to say -- they came out more fired up than us," Heatherington said. "They seemed more ready than we did for some reason."

The Eagles threw a retaliatory blow with 6:58 left in the second quarter, cutting the lead to 20-7 when Heatherington broke containment and ripped off a 30-yard touchdown run.

But, in the second half Young scored two more touchdowns, each from 9 yards, and Serra scored on a late 10-yard run by Chris Loving long after the game was already decided.

"It was not just some of the mistakes we made, but we played against a very good football team today, and they had a lot to do with what happened," Serra coach Rich Bowen said. "They are very good and, with the way they play defense, they took some of our weapons away from us."

From virtually the opening snap, Serra had trouble negating the brutish and bullying play of a Rollers defensive front that rotated William Rozman, Steven Smith, Kyle Blockson and Justin Williams in a 3-4 look.

That initial line of defense quashed what had been an ultra-athletic Serra offensive trio. Heatherington and running backs Loving and Isaiah Jackson all had rushed for more than 1,000 yards this season. But they accounted for 138 combined yesterday; Jackson had 67, Loving 54 and Heatherington 17.

"They kept us from doing anything," admitted Heatherington, whose eyes were bloodshot and who had tears leaking down his cheeks.

"We could never get a rhythm We could never get anything going. We were overmatched size-wise, but that is no excuse."

And, as Bowen stood addressing the media in the aftermath of his team's only loss this season, his eyes welled with tears. The normally unflappable former Serra quarterback deflected blame from his kids and continually praised the Rollers.

"I wish we could have played better, but we also should have coached better," Bowen said. "We played hard; they just played better."