Football royalty

Walk carries on the family legacy with record-breaking career

Tom Miller was a Tyrone sports icon for generations.

A three-year starter at quarterback in the 1960s, he went on to play Division I football at Colorado State and the College of Southern Utah before dabbling with semipro ball some years later.

He returned to the borough as a physical education teacher in 1968 to become the father of many youth sports programs that are now staples in Tyrone. He ran youth basketball camps, organized pee-wee baseball, created summer camps. In time he became the coach of the varsity football team, where he won a Western Conference title in 1986 and led the team to its first appearance in the District championship game.

He was the face of Tyrone sports, and in that role he put a lot of players on the map.

None more so than his grandson, Ashton Walk, who as Tyrone’s quarterback is making a run at passing records once thought to be untouchable.

Last week, with 249 yards in a 31-29 loss to Forest Hills, Walk threw for 249 yards, in the process becoming just the third quarterback at Tyrone to reach 2,000 yards in a single season. He’s now just under 5,000 yards in his career, making the school’s career record of 6,070 yards held by Steve Franco (2009-2011) not just reachable but well within his grasp.

It’s a possibility that Walk thinks about, and one for which he gives his grandfather, who died in 2022, lots of credit.

“I know how proud he is of me,” Walk said. “Since I was little he taught me to be a great quarterback. He started me at a young age and improved me the whole way.”

Walk’s Tyrone sports lineage doesn’t end with his grandfather. His mother Rachel was a high-scoring guard on Lady Eagle basketball teams in the late 1990s and his aunt Barbara was for years the program’s top scorer. She netted over 1,400 points in the 1980s well before the dawn of the three-point line and went on to a career at Saint Francis University that garnered her a spot in the school’s sports hall of fame.

Since I was little he taught me to be a great quarterback. He started me at a young age and improved me the whole way.

Ashton Walk

All of those influences are apparent in Walk’s own athletic career, where he is something of a throwback. He starts in three sports – football, baseball, and basketball – and he’s a playmaker in each.

“When I have off days I have to shoot the basketball and do baseball, so I don’t get much of a break, but it’s worth it,” he said.

If pressed, Walk will tell you football is his true passion, and so far that’s where he’s made his biggest mark.

He came onto the scene in 2021 as a freshman quarterback cleaning up for Keegan Gwinn, who had spent two years as a backup before ascending to the starting role. However, the offense went flat by the season’s midpoint, and Gwinn was struggling with injuries that limited his mobility.

By the second half of a Week 7 game against Penns Valley, the Golden Eagles were down two scores in a game they needed to have a shot at playoffs, and Walk got the call. He ultimately completed 12 of 22 passes for 180 yards and 2 touchdowns, including the go-ahead score on a 9-yard pass to Brady Ronan.

Tyrone went on to win 28-18, and Walk stayed on as the starting quarterback. A week later he threw for 305 yards against Philipsburg-Osceola, and he followed that up with 273 yards and 3 touchdowns against Hollidaysburg.

Walk finished his freshman campaign with 1,248 yards in only four starts, and a star was born.

He followed that season up by completing 133 of 249 passes for 1,651 yards and 22 scores in 2022, guiding Tyrone to an 8-3 record.

This season, Walk has matured into a true generational quarterback. Two weeks ago he established a single-game record for passing yards with 360 yards and four touchdown passes against Penns Valley, putting him in a position to surpass 2,000 yards against the Rangers.

He’s the only quarterback in school history to go over 300 yards in a game more than once.

“I’m thrilled that he’s had a heck of a year,” said Tyrone coach John Franco. “He will be the first to tell you that’s a combination of having a good offensive line, having good receivers, and then having a running game.”

Walk said that reaching 2,000 yards for the season was a goal he had established coming into his junior year, and he did, indeed, credit his teammates with helping him to reach the milestone. Walk has established an undeniable chemistry with Andrew Weaver, who has 34 receptions for 844 yards, and he’s gotten strong contributions from players like Ronan and Eli Woomer, who each have more than 300 yards through the air.

But despite individual accolades, Walk’s main goals always center around the team.

“My goals were to win the District championship,” he said. “I had some individual goals, but mostly it’s to make the District finals. To win that would be number one for me.”

In the one-and-done world of high school football playoffs, there’s no telling how close Walk can get to the all-time passing record this season. Tyrone is preparing to face Penn Cambria this week in the semifinals of the District 6 3A playoffs.

But Walk is on the verge of joining the rarified air of Tyrone players whose numbers seemed, for a time, unapproachable. He’s already one of only nine players to have accumulated more than 4,000 career yards.

There’s every reason to believe he will soon be among a class that includes only two players – Jesse Jones and Steve Franco. They were individuals who set their marks so far beyond their contemporaries that to think of anyone surpassing them seemed like dreaming.

For Jones, who ran for almost 7,000 yards from 1997-2000, that may still be the case. But Franco’s all-time record is getting nearer and nearer.

Both of those players won District championships, and while Walk would like to surpass the career mark, a title is still the foremost goal on his mind.

“Since my freshman year, the all-time record has been one of my individual goals,” he said. “I always looked at trying my best to get all the passing records. Obviously, winning a District title is the number one thing, but I thought that would be cool individually.”

It would certainly be a mark his grandfather would look at with an approving smile.