Sports Nuts and Bolts

The devil was in the details for Fostoria Redmen

Yes, last Friday night at Fremont’s Don Paul Stadium Genoa beat Fostoria High School 28-14, but there were a number of turning points where momentum could have swung in favor of the Redmen but obviously did not.

The famous Michigan football announcer, the late Bob Ufer, used to call it "digging in the iffy bag."

In the second half, with Genoa ahead 28-14, FHS’s Shaquiel Taylor intercepted a pair of passes. Taylor picked off a halfback pass early in the third period that gave the Redmen the ball at their own 22 yard line. But a quick three-and-out was all that resulted.

Then in the fourth quarter, Taylor again swiped a pass and returned it to the Fostoria 45. From there the Redmen drove to the Comet 34, but on fourth-and-six Micah Hyde was stopped 2 yards short.

A couple of sacks and a dropped pass also kept FHS on the short side of the momentum war.

In the second half, after the Redmen defensive coaches made their adjustments, junior safety Jake Solether came through with several oustanding plays. The 5-foot-7, 150-pound Solether came through with a sack, two tackles-for-losses, a fumble recovery and a pass breakup.

Six penalties also hurt the Redmen during the game, especially a personal foul call near the end of the first quarter. On the play Jon Ramirez had just stopped star Genoa fullback Greg Hillabrand for a 1-yard loss, but further gang tackling pushed the pile back after the whistle and the flag was thrown. The penalty moved the ball from the Genoa 43 to the FHS 42, and from there the Comets finished the drive with Marcus Vicars scoring from the 1.

After returning the ensuing kickoff to their 33, the Redmen made one first down then ended up having to punt from their own 35. Hyde boomed a 57-yard punt that left Genoa first-and-10 from their own 8.

On the next play, senior halfback Blair Hillabrand blasted off right tackle on a counter play and went 92 yard untouched to paydirt. FHS’s defense was crowding up into the box on the play and Skilliter got a great jump. Five yards beyond the line, he was well beyond all the Redmen defenders.

On defense Skilliter was a force all over the field; a menace looking for a place to happen. Skilliter made some big-hit tackles, broke up passes and pressured Hyde on blitzes from his corner position.

The Comets’ defensive scheme was designed to keep Hyde inside the hash marks if possible. Six-foot-eight defensive end Richard Wonnell, a junior, has surprising agility for a big man, and his huge wing span seemed to be able to harass the FHS quarterback. Junior outside linebackers Jon Lester and Hillabrand also pressured Hyde, and a number of times the Genoa defensive ends would actually slow down their rush just to ensure that Hyde did not get outside of them.

Genoa scored touchdowns on each of its first half possessions, and in the second half FHS could not get the game down to a one-score contest.

The Comets proved to be just as fast as their most ardent supporters had been pronouncing. And their wing T offense, with its excellent faking and misdirection, made the first half a nightmare for the Redmen defense.

Genoa is a smallish club with lots of talent and discplined defense. They come to "thump," and if your defense is one misstep behind, it’s "Good Night, Irene."

Chieftains stomp Mogadore

Hopewell-Loudon found the defensive effort it had been looking for all season Friday night. And it came at just the right time.

The Chieftains gave their offense good field position all game long and limited Mogadore to 128 total yards en route to a 30-0 victory in a Division VI regional semifinal at Mansfield Madison’s Ram Field.

Hopewell-Loudon (12-0) advanced to play Norwalk St. Paul in the regional final Friday night at Fremont’s Don Paul Stadium.

Mogadore (10-2) entered the matchup with a reputation of having a strong running game, averaging 260 yards per contest. But the Chieftains limited the Wildcats to only 73 rushing yards and six first downs the entire night, a defensive performance that H-L coach Brian Colatruglio ranked No. 1 for the season.

"To hold a physical running team like they are to pretty low numbers, it’s the best effort I’ve seen," Colatruglio said. "I think our (defensive) line did a great job of controlling the line of scrimmage and controlling the gaps. Our linebackers, Nick Steve and Hudson Smith, were all over the field because our D-line was controlling the line of scrimmage."

Defense kept the Chieftains in the game when rain slipped up their passing game, resulting in three incompletions on their first series. After the weather cleared, Chieftain quarterback Tyler Brown hit Andrew Brickner for a 43-yard gain that put them at the Mogadore 13. Four plays later, Brown tossed a 5-yard touchdown pass to Andrew Brickner for the first score of the night with 1:51 left the first quarter.

At the beginning of the second quarter, Steve intercepted Mogadore quarterback Chad White’s pass, which Wildcat coach Matt Adorni said deflated his team.

"They manhandled us up front," said Adorni. "They had a good defensive game plan and they flew to the football. They guessed right on some plays, and they shifted some guys around. No. 38 (Steve), they plugged him in after the (Tiffin) Calvert game, and he’s one of the best linebackers we’ve seen this year."

The Chieftains drove down the field in the second quarter as Brown completed a 16-yard pass to Miles Chapman and a 25-yarder to Andrew Brickner to set up a Jay Yost 30-yard field goal with 53 seconds left.

Although Hopewell-Loudon led 10-0 at the half, Colatruglio made some adjustments with his team’s running game to add more balance to the offense.

"We narrowed down our run package," Colatruglio said. "We had a couple of plays we thought we could get going. They were bringing a lot of heat, and we were able to sneak some traps through there and do some things to counteract their aggressiveness a little bit. That was huge in the third quarter. Once we get that balance going, we’re a load."

Aaron Kapelka looked like he was running downhill in the second half, as he racked up 98 yards on 13 carries in the third and fourth quarters alone. The junior running back powered up the middle and moved the chains to keep his offense on the field.

With 10:36 left in the third, Yost reeled in a pass from Brown and stretched across the line for an 18-yard touchdown and a 17-0 lead. At the 4:50 mark, Brown completed a pass to Andrew Brickner to extend the lead 24-0.

Then Steve tackled Mogadore’s Kodey Chance for a loss, which pushed the Wildcats back and forced a punt. Chance came into the game as Mogadore’s leading rusher with 1,196 yards and 13 touchdowns but mustered only 7 yards on 10 carries against the Chieftains.

The adjustments to the Chieftain running game became evident late in the third as Kapelka rushed for 30 yards on five carries, dragging defenders on his back. That culminated in a 19-yard fourth-down score from Brown to Andrew Brickner for a 30-0 final. Three of the times the Chieftains found themselves in fourth-down situations, they stayed calm and converted with plays to the end zone.

"They’re pretty even-keeled," Colatruglio said of his players. "They’ll just run the play I call. Some of them probably didn’t even know it was fourth down. They feed off Tyler and Tyler’s calm."

The Chieftains rolled up 323 yards of total offense as Brown completed 16 of 33 passes for 202 yards and four touchdowns. Andrew Brickner caught eight passes for 129 yards and three touchdowns, while Kapelka rushed for 112 yards on 20 carries. Miles Chapman grabbed four passes for 41 yards and Yost kicked a 30-yard field goal and hauled in three catches for 28 yards and a touchdown.

Chance and Jake McAvinew led the Wildcats with 34 combined rushing yards on 20 carries, while White connected on 6 of 23 passes for 55 yards.

- Tessa Sibley

Football fairness and other questions

We at Sports Nuts and Bolts get a number of calls from parents of area student-athletes.

Some want photographs of their kids. Some want their kids to be photographed. Some want something else, like for us to intervene in a dispute with a coach over a playing-time issue.

Playing time is not for us to decide. Nor is it for the parents. It’s for the coaches to decide, though, by and large, the players are the ones who make the decisions through the way they practice and play.

Anyway, we recently got a call from a parent whose son plays seventh-grade football at an area school. This man claims that his son is not getting a fair shake from the coaching staff in two ways: one, that they are discriminating against the child as one who has a learning disorder; and, two, that they are allowing an eighth-grader to play on the seventh-grade team because the eighth-grader’s father is a recreational-sports-playing buddy of the seventh-grade coach.

The son of the man who called us does not play the same position as the boy who is playing down a grade, but “it’s not fair to all of the seventh-graders,” he said.

The athletic director of the high school of the district in question told us the eighth-grade boy is a first-year football player who actually began the year in seventh-grade classes and is playing with the seventh-graders because of low numbers at that level.

And that is perfectly legal, according to an assistant commissioner of the Ohio High School Athletic Association with whom we made contact.

“There is nothing impermissible about playing middle-school students on either the seventh- or eighth-grade squads,” she said in an e-mail.

“We would not put our kids into a situation that is not good for them,” the school’s athletic director said.

The allegations of out-and-out discrimination against the one child has the makings of an everyday he said-she said situation that we’re not in the business of deciding.

And in small-numbers situations at a lot of schools, it’s common for seventh- and eighth-grade athletes to compete together. Should that be the case? What are your thoughts?

The History of Sport, Part 4: Bluffton Beavers

With the completion of Bluffton's baseball season this week, this entry of the series will focus on a more regional sports angle.

Bluffton Beavers
Bluffton University
Bluffton, OH
School founded in 1899
NCAA Division III, Mideast Region, Heartland Collegiate Athletic Conference
Facility: Bluffton University Memorial Field

One of US News’ best colleges of 2008, Bluffton University offers athletics in baseball, basketball, cross-country, football, soccer, softball, tennis, track and field, and volleyball. About 45 minutes away from Fostoria, Bluffton University was founded by the General Conference Mennonite Church in 1899 as the Central Mennonite College. The college was renamed Bluffton College in 1913. Bluffton College’s attendance grew by 1930 but fell to less than 200 because of the Great Depression. The attendance numbers fell even further, down to a low of 77, during World War II but as soon as the war was over, attendance exploded once more. The college became affiliated with the Mennonite Church USA in 2002 upon a merger and Bluffton College became a university in 2004.

Bluffton University made national headlines on March 2, 2007, when a bus carrying the university’s baseball team plunged off an overpass in Atlanta, GA, when the bus driver thought he was in a carpool lane. The bus, carrying 35 people, crashed onto Interstate 75 and killed six people – four members of the baseball team as well as the bus driver and his wife. The other 29 people were injured, six of them seriously. One of those six seriously injured died a week later.

The Bluffton baseball team kicked off the 2008 season hoping to overcome the tragedy of March 2, 2007, and held a dedication ceremony on March 12, 2008, to mark the one year anniversary of the accident. The university also renamed the playing field to Bluffton University Memorial Field. They tried to repeat their success of the 2006 season but fell short.

While at one point in the season they enjoyed a 5-2 season, the losses soon came in droves. They finished the season on May 4 with a 15-23 record and a 7-15 record in their conference, losing their last four games.

Bluffton University has won championships in other sports, including a double-whammy in 2004 when the softball and women’s track field teams won the conference championships. It was the second time the softball team won the conference. The first time was in 1999. In 2000, the football team tied with Hanover College for the HCAC championship.

In the late 80s, Bluffton volleyball dominated the region, with the 1987, 1988, and 1989 teams, led by Deborah Hucke, right, winning the conference and taking a Division title in 1988.

Despite the tragedy of last year, Bluffton University will continue to mend and provide competitive athletics for its students in the future.

Fun fact: Jeff Timmons, left, the founder and former lead singer for the boy band 98 Degrees, played football for Bluffton University.

~ Chris, guest blogger