CARDINAL MOONEY: Cardinals fall 34-20 against Mentor High School
By Joe Scalzo
The Cardinals dropped a 34-20 decision against Mentor.
MENTOR — With less than a minute left in Friday’s game, Mentor High football coach Steve Trivisonno pumped his fist, smiled and yelled over at two guys on the sidelines, saying “You do realize that if we do anything on kickoffs, it’s 34-7.”
Instead, his team gave up 20. It’ll have to do.
In a match up of two state runners-up from last season, Mentor survived a comeback from Cardinal Mooney to win 34-20 at Jerome T. Osborne Sr. Stadium.
The loss snapped a 19-game regular season win streak by Mooney and gave Mentor a little bit of revenge after losing 21-10 in last year’s opener between the teams.
“To beat a team like that, I’ll take that any night of the week,” said Trivisonno.
Mooney lost five Division I players to graduation and was starting a lot of juniors, so, naturally, it struggled with inconsistency. Those problems may not have been so evident had Mooney not been playing the largest public school in the state, a program that had lost the last two Division I state championship games.
“There was a lot of new players and a lot of inconsistency,” said Mooney coach P.J. Fecko. “We didn’t make the plays we needed to and we didn’t do a very good job of tackling, but these guys have a lot of fight in them.
“That’s something to work with, that’s for sure.”
Mentor’s no-huddle spread offense — which is run faster than possibly any school in the state — gave Mooney’s defense fits. (Mooney hasn’t given up more than 28 points since 2005.) Senior quarterback Anthony Fracci, who was stuck behind Mr. Football winner Bart Tanski last year, played well, completing 22-of-32 for 222 yards and three TDs and running for another TD. His main target was wideout Mike Johanek (10 catches, 111 yards).
“Coming in, we knew [Fracci] was a very capable ball player,” said Fecko. “He made a lot of plays, a lot of ad-libbing plays. He did a great job leading that team.”
His counterpart, Mooney junior Alex Zordich, showed off his strong arm but looked tentative at times. Running backs Ray Vinopal and, especially, Braylon Heard showed flashes of their potential, but it will take a few games before things come together.
After falling behind 14-0 at halftime and surviving a long Mentor drive in the third quarter, Heard broke off a 78-yard touchdown run and Mooney followed with a recovered fumble on the ensuing kickoff and a 1-yard touchdown by Vinopal to tie the game at 14.
After a Mentor touchdown, Mooney’s Justin Leonelli returned the kickoff 67 yards (one of two long kickoffs for Leonelli on the night) to set up Zordich’s 1-yard TD run that made it 21-20 with 10:21 left in the fourth quarter.
Mentor then scored two touchdowns to put the game away.
“In the second half, I thought we played much better,” said Fecko. “The way the guys battled back and tied it up with sudden changes and executing the adjustments we made at halftime, those are all positives.”
Heard finished with 118 yards on 10 carries and Vinopal added 77 on 21 for the Cardinals (0-1), who have played in four straight Division IV state finals, winning two.
Senior John Simon, an Ohio State recruit, had two sacks from his defensive tackle position.
“John Simon’s a player; he’s awesome,” said Trivisonno. “They’ll [Mooney] be fine.”
scalzo@vindy.com
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