The Blue Devils blew past Youngstown Christian in the second quarter.

By PETE MOLLICA

VINDICATOR SPORTS STAFF

MCDONALD — McDonald High football coach Dan Williams didn’t know how good his team was going into the season opener Friday night, but after the game he had a much better idea.

The Blue Devils started slowly, but then caught fire and rolled to a season opening 47-0 victory over Youngstown Christian here.

Williams felt that he had some questions to be answered and most of them should have been answered by halftime.

“We really didn’t know how good we were going to be,” Williams said, “and we didn’t know anything about Youngstown Christian other than they had several good athletes.”

But the Eagles, in only their fourth season of competition, lacked the one thing the Blue Devils had plenty of — depth.

Eagles depth limited

Youngstown Christian coach Brian Marrow, in his first season, has only 29 players on the roster and two of those were injured.

“Then we lost four more tonight and that’s something we really couldn’t afford,” Morrow said. “Depth was a big problem, but penalties and our own mistakes also did us in tonight.”

Williams praised his defense, which held the Eagles to just over 100 yards of total offense and he was relieved to see his offensive line come through.

“We started slowly, but once we got over the opening game jitters we started to roll,” Williams said. “I thought our defense was the difference in the game, they did a tremendous job.”

While neither team could get anything going offensively, the Blue Devils got the first break when senior quarterback Matt Krumpak, from the shotgun, punted from the Eagles 36 down to the 1-yard line.

Safety gets team rolling

On the first play McDonald’s Mike Thomas raced through and tackled Eagles’ tailback Toba Olarewaju in the end zone for a safety.

That got the Blue Devils rolling and in the second quarter they scored four touchdowns to pull to a 29-0 halftime advantage.

With Krumpak guiding the attack the Blue Devils drove 61 yards for their first score which came on a five-yard run by Devon Colburn.

Then Krumpak, who finished 9-of-13 for 150 yards in less than three quarters of action, hit Cory Lunn with a 12 yard scoring toss. That score was set up by two Krumpak passes to Thomas for 16 yards and Nick Cupan for 13 yards.

After Colburn returned a Eagles punt from his own 32 back to the Eagles 38, the Blue Devils rolled again. Krumpak hit Alex Sampson with a 22 yard pass and then Sampson ran the final 5 yards for the score.

Following another nifty return by Colburn the Blue Devils scored again just before halftime as Sampson ran over from 2 yards out.

Sampson finished the game with 98 yards rushing on 13 carries and two scores.

Reserves finish up

McDonald’s reserves took over in the second half, scoring two more third quarter touchdowns, one on a 2-yard run by Ben Davis, who set up the score with a 20-yard scamper.

Nick Cupan raced 35 yards for another touchdown, while freshman Zack Tura closed out the scoring in the final quarter with a 31-yard scoring run.

“Depth was a big difference in the game,” said Williams. “We used all 58 players that were available to us, even all the freshmen.”

mollica@vindy.com