Football 2018 Week #5 at St. Lawrence

On the way to St. Lawrence University, 12 hours north of our campus by bus, we passed a lot of towns I’ve never heard of…Clifton Springs, Cheerful Valley, Sodus Bay, Port Byron.

It was a beautiful early fall day for football, even a tree or two that started to turn. Enjoyed looking out the window as I listened to some old Jerry Jeff Walker album. It was our first leave Thursday trip and it was hard on everyone. Missed classes, two nights in strange beds, too much road food.

We had to hit the breaks hard when there was a sudden accident in front of us. I’ll write later about the time when we were coaching at CWRU and our driver actually dozed off and one of our coaches had to scream to wake him up. Pretty scary sometimes. Look what happended a few year ago to the Bluffton baseball team.

We took I71 north to 271 over to I90 east , then to I81 north towards Canada. We spent Thursday in a Windham near Erie, practiced at Mercyhurst College, then back on the road. Lunch was at a Pondarosa, how any of them are left?

Friday night we stayed at a fishing/boating resort right on the St. Lawrence seaway. A combination of a motel, lodges, and free standing houses, it had a real old style feel to it. Knotted pne paneling in the rooms, a musty smell in the closets. Real nice people, the only negative is some of the rooms had no hot water, like mine!

On the road when you order pizza for a 90 it is always mediocre. No one can make that many pizzas and have them tste good. However, the pizza on Friday was pretty decent, it was a New York style with large thin crusted slices.

Besides the game, the part of the trip most of the kids and coaches will remember was stopping and seeing Niagra Falls. If you have never been there it is quite the sight, and most on the trip had never been there. We spent on hour there walking through the park on the American side, taking pictures, and enjoying a sunny mid day.

We won the game 48-12.They had a chance. They scored to make it 17-12 us. They went for two, we stuffed them. But on the kickoff we were called for a penalty, so they had us stating our drive inside our own ten. A fumble or interception could give the lead, a three and out would force us to punt and give them great field position. But we once again answered the call, driving 90 yards for a touchdown and we never looked back and they were never back in the game.

The official game report care of ThomasMoreSaints.com:

 The Thomas More football team had 334 yards of rushing today (Saturday, September 29, 2018) as it defeated St. Lawrence University, 48-12, at Leckonby Stadium in Canton, New York.

• Thomas More took a 7-0 lead with 6:49 to play in the quarter when senior running back Luke Zajac (Edgewood, Ky./Dixie Heights) scored on a five-yard touchdown runs and junior kicker Cole Mathias (Reynoldsburg, Ohio/Reynoldsburg) added the point-after-attempt.

• Mathias extended the lead to 10-0 when he made a 35-yard field goal with 10:48 to play in the quarter.
• Thomas More made the score 17-0 with 6:39 to play in the first half when senior running back Hjavier Pitts (Cincinnati, Ohio/Mt. Healthy) scored on a one-yard run and Mathias added the PAT.
• St. Lawrence cut the lead to 17-6 at halftime when Aaron Ruthman connected on a 26-yard touchdown pass to Travis Marnell and Austin Pinard's PAT failed with 4:05 to play in the quarter.

• St. Lawrence made the score 17-12 with 11:10 to play in the third quarter when Jamie Battaglia scored on a nine-yard run and the two-point try failed.
• Thomas More increased the lead to 24-12 when junior wide receiver Da'marco Canty (Bogart, Ga./North Oconee) scored on a 43-yard touchdown pass from junior quarterback Justin Post (Macedonia, Ohio/Nordonia) and Mathias added the PAT with 7:19 to play in the quarter.
• Sophomore running back Dillon Powell (Independence, Ky./Simon Kenton) scored on a three-yard run and Mathias added the PAT to extend the lead to 31-12 with 1:25 to play in the quarter.

• Thomas More made the score 38-12 with 14:53 to play in the game when Post connected on a 13-yard touchdown pass to Pitts and Mathias added the PAT.
• Zajac scored on a 10-yard run and Mathias added the PAT to make the score 45-12 with 7:00 to play in the game.
• Thomas More closed out the scoring with 1:44 to play in the game when Mathias connected on a 32-yard field goal for the final score of 48-12.

• Thomas More improve to 4-1 and St. Lawrence falls to 1-4.
• This is Thomas More's fifth game of the season and the fifth different state it has played a game this season.
• Thomas More had 600 yards of offense (334 rushing/266 passing) to St. Lawrence's 243 (42 rushing/201 passing).
• Post was 16-of-27 passing for 266 yards and two touchdowns and had four rushes for 12 yards.
• Pitts had 26 rushes for 142 yards and a touchdown, while also pulling in three catches for 33 yards and a touchdown.
• Zajac had 18 carries for 117 yards and two touchdown, while also having one catche for 48 yards.
• Canty finished the game with three catches for 86 yards and a touchdown.
• Senior wide receiver Logan Winkler (Independence, Ky./Simon Kenton) had four catches for 69 yards.
• Junior linebacker Cody Coffey (Anderson, Ohio/Anderson) had six tackles (five solo/one assisted).
• First-year defensive back Lashunn Townsend, Jr. (Erlanger, Ky./Lloyd) had five tackles (all solo) and one interception.
• Junior linebacker Adam Guard (Lawrence, Ind./Pinecrest Academy (Ga.)) finished game with five tackles (three solo/two assisted), including two tackles for a loss.

Football 2018: Week #4 vs Huntingdon

Week #4

For the second week in a row we had a game that went down to the wire against a very good team and came away with a win. We traveled eight hours south of our campus to play Huntingdon College in Montgomery, Alabama. We took I71 south to Louisville then hit I65 all the way to Montgomery. Another two Golden Corral trips (lunch Friday, breakfast Saturday) to another campus I had never been to before. We had a nice turn out of fans and family who took the trip. Huntingdon has a picturesque campus, a good DIII football stadium with great spots close to the field to tailgate, and a great marching band. They were as good as any small college marching band I have ever seen, and better than some of the big schools.

We traded scores the whole game and found ourselves behind with two minutes to go. But our offense looked like the Packers n their glory days, marching down the field and scoring for the win with fifty seconds left. Kudos to quarterback Justin Post.

Things that don’t happen at OSU: Our practice schedule has been a mess this year, sharing our field with both soccer teams. We’ve practiced at 3:00, at 4:00, at 5:00. We’ve practiced at 6:30 in the morning. We’ve practiced on our home field; off campus at a local fitness facility; and on the road at another college.

The official game recap care of ThomasMore.com:

(MONTGOMERY, Ala.) – The Thomas More football team extended its winning streak to three games today (Saturday, September 22, 2018) as it defeated Huntingdon College, 38-35, on Charles Lee Field at Samford Stadium in Montgomery, Alabama.

The Saints improve to 3-1 and the Hawks fall to 0-2.

First Quarter:

•    Thomas More took a 7-0 lead with 10:02 to play in the quarter when senior running back Hjavier Pitts (Cincinnati, Ohio/Mt. Healthy) scored on a 14-yard run and junior placer kicker Cole Mathias (Reynoldsburg, Ohio/Reynoldsburg) added the point-after-attempt.

•    The Hawks tied the game at 7-7 when Michael Lambert connected on a 22-yard pass to Otis Porter and Chase Young added the PAT with 7:03 to play in the quarter.

Second Quarter:

•    Pitts scored on a 14-yard touchdown pass from junior quarterback Justin Post (Macedonia/Nordonia) and Mathias added the PAT to give Thomas More a 14-7 lead with 13:33 to play in the first half.

•    Huntingdon made the score 14-14 with 12:13 to play in the quarter when Porter scored on a 62-yard touchdown pass from Lambert and Young added the PAT.

•    The Saints took a 21-14 lead with 7:09 to play in the quarter when first-year wide receiver Nick Hall (Cincinnati, Ohio/Elder) caught a nine-yard touchdown pass from Post and Mathias added the PAT.

•    Huntingdon made the score 21-21 at halftime when Lambert threw a 38-yard touchdown pass to C.J. Pugh and Young added the PAT with 5:17 to play in the quarter.

Third Quarter:

•    Thomas More took a 24-21 lead as time expired in the quarter when Mathias made a 40-yard field goal.

Fourth Quarter:

•    The Saints extended the lead to 31-21 with 9:55 to play in the game when Post connected on a 14-yard touchdown pass to junior wide receiver Da'marco Canty (Bogart, Ga./North Oconee) and Mathias added the PAT.

•    The Hawks cut the lead to 31-28 when Hunter Huckbay scored on a 15-yard touchdown pass from Lambert and Young added the PAT with 8:35 to play in the game.

•    Huntingdon took its first lead of the game with 2:43 to play when Lambert and Porter connected on a 41-yard touchdown pass and Young added the PAT.

•    Undaunted, the Saints scored the game-winning touchdown with 50-seconds to play in the game when Post scored on a 10-yard run and Mathias added the PAT for the final score of 38-35.

Notables:

•    Thomas More had 510 total yards (332 rushing/178 passing) to Huntingdon's 518 yards (199 rushing/319 passing).

•    Post was 15-of-25 passing for 178 yards and three touchdowns, while also rushing the ball eight times for 35 yards and a touchdown.

•    Pitts had 21 carries for 176 yards and a touchdown and two catches for 27 yards and a touchdown.

•    Zajac had 21 rushes for 108 yards, while also pulling in two catches for 11 yards.

•    Senior wide receiver Darrell Crenshaw (Dayton, Ohio/Trotwood-Madison) had two catches for 42 yards.

•    Senior wide receiver Logan Winkler (Independence, Ky./Simon Kenton) had two catches for 40 yards.

•    Canty finished the game with three catches for 31 yards and a touchdown.

•    Junior defensive back Thomas Williams (Oregonia, Ohio/Clinton-Massie) led the team in tackles with 15 (six solo/nine assisted) and had one forced fumble.

•    Junior linebacker Adam Guard (Lawrenceburg, Ind./Pinecrest Academy (Ga.)) had eight tackles (two solo/six assisted).

•    Senior defensive back Steven Everson (Scottdale, Ga./Heritage) finished the game with five tackles (four solo/one assisted) and had one interception.

•    Junior defensive lineman Brandon Bohn (Edgewood, Ky./Dixie Heights), sophomore Ryan Stofko (Cincinnati, Ohio/Moeller) and sophomore defensive lineman Elijah Jouett (Elsmere, Ky./Lloyd Memorial) each had one sack.

Hjavier Pitts made d3football.com team of the week!

Football 2018: Hjavier's Run vs. Plattsville

In our win over UWPlattsville Hjavier Pitts scored on a 47 yard run that was all magic. Dave Hostetler caught most of it in a series of photos. Great work by both the running back and by the photographer.

Football 2018: Concussions Revisited

For the second season n a row we have lost one of our better freshmen recruits to a concussion. In both instances the player left home with a warning from their moms, "One more concussion and you are through." Good for them, bad for us. But in the fall of 2018, especially with the implementation of new tackling rules on most levels of football, concussions is something that football has to deal with and won't go away.
This is a topic I will touch on periodically this fall. Below is an article i wrote five years ago for FoxSports magazine division. The one frustrating thing to me that hasn't happened is a national data base of concussions, where athletes are tracked from their earliest signs of concussions up through high school and college and beyond.

(Originally written in 2013 for FoxSports news division)

That one thing that just won’t go away, the never-ending news about concussions. You only have to look at our own Browns to see the effect concussions can have on a team, as quarterback Colt McCoy and tight end Ben Watson both had last season cut short because of head injuries. And it could be argued that wide receiver Mohammad Massaquoi hasn’t been the same since James Harrison laid him out with a concussion two seasons ago. What if McCoy, Watson, or Massaquoi take a big hit to the head early next season? Are they done for the year? Are they done for their career?

Concussions are not just a football or NFL problem. As I write this article rookie sensation Kylie Irvine of the Cleveland Cavaliers has missed a string of games because of a concussion that happened in December. In the NHL hockey’s #1 superstar Sydney Crosby has not played, except for a few weeks, for over a full season because of a concussion he received. No one, including Crosby, has any idea when he will be back. He recently told the Canadian Press, “You have days when you feel like you’re getting better and the symptoms aren’t quite as bad. Other days they’re a little worse.” More importantly, this year a record number of youth league, high school, and college players have missed games in a variety of sports because of concussions. And it is only going to get worse on all levels until it gets better.

This time concussions are not going away, it is affecting too many athletes on too many levels in too many sports, with football leading the way. Popular magazines and websites, as well as serious medical journals, are filled with articles about concussions and football. The mainstream media is also not going to let it go away, with daily newspapers such as the New York Times as well as the major news networks doing regular reports on concussions. If you got the time, go to Yahoo.com and read the article “End Game: Brain Trauma And The Future Of Youth Football In America” by Patrick Hruby, which was originally posted on February 13, 2012. Or go to nytimes.comand read any of the articles written by Allan Schwarz. Both Hruby and Schwarz are serious journalists looking at concussions and head injuries from a very realistic and pragmatic angle. For those of us who love football and have read their writings find the situation very scary.

The comment I keep hearing from people in the medical field who are now dealing with concussions is that football is in trouble. It cannot be ignored, and the more we hear about it the more serious the situation gets. Plus, in a very Watergate-ish slant to the story, stories are becoming public about how the NFL has ignored the situation for too long, that they knew for some time things about head injuries that are just now becoming public knowledge.

That is what the Duerson lawsuit is about. If you remember, Dave Duerson was a Notre Dame grad and former pro bowl safety with the Chicago Bears who committed suicide by shooting himself in the chest last year. His last request was that his brain be studied to analyze the damage football left on it. His family is arguing not that concussions happened, but that information about the severity and long-term affects of concussions was withheld from him as a player so he would continue to play.

And this is not going to go away. This is the third time in the last five years I have written about concussions, and each time because the situation keeps becoming more and more serious.

Drastic things need to happen. To help prevent the long term pounding that linemen take on the head there is a push to outlaw the three and four point stances. Everyone on the field would start in a two-point stance. Many offensive linemen do this already, especially in obvious pass situations. This would keep many linemen from attacking their opponents’ head first, with the top of their helmet taking the first blow.

One thing that is going to happen very soon, and is happening already with some players, is to track concussions over the length of a complete playing career, from the first time a kid puts pads on in CYO or Pop Warner all the way through the pro leagues, including the NFL, the Arena League, the Canadian League, and all of the semi-pro and amateur adult tackle leagues across the country. It would also track any head injuries playing any other sport also.

Something that is going to happen, and there will be a fight over who decides what, is going to be a limit on the amount of concussions a player can have over a certain amount of time, or over the course of their career.   Players like Troy Palamalu can’t keep coming back week after week after suffering head injuries. And if a player has to hang it up after so many concussions, so be it. That has already happened on the high school and college level, and if the NFL really cares about the long-range health of its players it has to happen on that level too.

            One final note…everyone who has read my column for the last five or six years that I have been writing it knows that I have been very concerned about concussions and football. I have written two columns about the topic for this publication, as well as writing about it  for other publications and websites as well. I have great concern about a situation that was first written about in the New York Times on August 24 of this year. The Times reported that the NFL possibly influenced ESPN to drop a series on concussions the sports network was doing with Frontline, a public affairs television series often seen on public television.  According to the Times the series described the NFL as “turning a blind eye that players were sustaining brain trauma on the field that could lead to profound, long-term cognitive disability.” The early evidence shows ESPN caving into one of its biggest, if not the biggest, business partner in the National Football League. ESPN has prided itself over the years of not only broadcasting sports, but also being sports journalists. I hope they didn’t cross the line from journalism to corporate greed by pulling the plug on the concussion series because of pressure from the NFL. Concussions will continue to be the biggest story in football over the next few years.