St. Ignatius wins, 56-0, against Harding

By CHUCK HOUSTEAU

VINDICATOR CORRESPONDENT

WARREN — Warren Harding coach D.J Dota knew there would be nights like this as he attempted to rebuild the Division 1 football program in his first year as head coach of the Raiders.

Warren Harding was totally outplayed by one of the top teams in the state as Cleveland St. Ignatius routed Harding 56-0 Saturday at Mollenkopf Stadium.

“This is a learning curve for us,” Dota said. “We have a new staff and a lot of new players. I want to say I’d like to get frustrated but I’m not going to.

“It’s a teaching process with young guys and we have to just keep teaching away.”

Dota is hoping the Raiders learned alot about themselves despite the lopsided loss.

St.Ignatius head coach Chuck Kyle said his team is also young but even the veteran coach was impressed with his team’s performance.

“I thought we played a nice all-around game,” Kyle said. “We have some youth too. We thought we could be better as a team if we keep stepping it up each game and we seem to be doing that.

“We thought we could throw the ball tonight,” Kyle said. “Our quarterback [Andrew Holland] has a lot of upside and tonight he came out on fire.”

The Wildcats dominated the Raiders from the start and scored on their first five possesions of the game. A sixth drive ended at the Harding 6-yard line as time ran out in the first half.

St. Ignatius opened the scoring by driving 69 yards in nine plays mostly on the arm of their junior quarterback Holland.

Holland connected on 5 of 7 passes in the drive before finding tight end Kyle Kramer on a 3-yard scoring play.

Holland completed 10 of 15 passes in the first half for 147 and two touchdowns. Holland also ran for a score on a 30-yard scamper.

The Wildcats were prolific at one stretch late in the first quarter and into the second period as they scored four times on seven plays.

After Holland’s touchdown pass to Kramer, Francis DeSico scored one play after the Wildcats got the ball back on a 57-yard run.

That was followed up with a 49-yard run by Michael Anter on the second play of St. Ignatius’ next possession.

The Wildcats outgained the Raiders 335-59 yards in the first half as the Raiders failed to mount any kind of offensive attack.

The Raiders’ best drive was late in the first quarter when they traveled from their own 20 to midfield in six plays before Harding quarterback Mike Dorsey fumbled a bad snap a bad snap from center.

“Our defense did a nice job,” Kyle said. “Warren has some nice weapons and they spread you out but I thought we did a nice job of adjusting and shutting them down.”

Warren was led by sophomore quarter Mike Dorsey who led the Raiders with 65 yards rushing in 15 carries.

The Raiders however only managed 110 yards of offense and turned the ball over 3 times.

St. Ignatius (6-1) compiled 433 yards of offense including 147 passing yards by Holland who completed 10 of 15 passes.