43
ITCL Tier Two: McDonald Blue Devils 21, Leetonia Bears 13
Photo
LEETONIA - MCDONALD - (23) Seth McNally of Leetonia tries to track down (7) Mike Thomas after a big gain during their game Friday night at Leetonia.
With the win, the Blue Devils clinched the outright ITCL Tier Two championship.
LEETONIA — Despite clinging to a narrow 14-13 lead in the fourth quarter, scoring was the furthest thing from the minds of the McDonald High football players.
The objective when the Blue Devils got the ball at their own 20 with 8:25 left was simple — move the chains.
Utilizing its power running game to pick up chunks of yardage on first down, McDonald chewed up more than seven minutes and, for good measure, scored with 1:01 left to secure a hard-fought 21-13 victory over Leetonia and clinch the outright ITCL Tier Two championship.
“Coach [Dan Williams] told us not to fight for the extra yard if we didn’t need to because we needed to keep the ball and not fumble,” said McDonald running back Alex Sampson. “Leetonia has a great offense and they pounded it at us in the third quarter. But luckily, we were able to do the same thing in the fourth.”
The Blue Devils ran just six plays in the third quarter, as Leetonia held the ball for over eight minutes. But while the Bears were successful in ball control, they didn’t have any points to show for it.
That was the story of the second half for Leetonia, which missed a field goal, had another one blocked and were stopped on fourth down at the McDonald in the closing seconds.
“Our defense has been underrated all year,” said Williams. “I can’t say enough about how the defense played tonight. We came up with the blocked field goal and they missed one. [Josh] Selway is a great player and our guys just had enough discipline to be in the right spots tonight. He got loose a few times, even when we were in the right places, but we contained him.
“Our kids were really focused on winning the ITCL outright this year after sharing it with those guys [Leetonia] last year. This was a championship football game and both teams put everything on the line.”
Leetonia scored first, recovering a McDonald fumble on the game’s opening kickoff at the 11. On the fourth play, Selway scored from the 1 to give the Bears a 7-0 lead.
But McDonald, behind the running of Sampson, who finished with 125 yards, scored on its first two possessions to seize a 14-7 advantage.
The most important play came following the Blue Devils’ second touchdown — a 1 yard plunge by Sampson. After missing the extra point after the first touchdown, McDonald elected to go for a two-point conversion the second time.
Quarterback Nick Accordino connected with Sampson for the successful conversion, giving the Blue Devils a 14-7 lead with one second left in the first quarter.
Leetonia rallied just before the half, scoring on a 1-yard run by Andrew Trummer. But the first of three kick attempts in the game failed and the Bears trailed 14-13 at intermission.
“Turnovers and special teams are important in tough games like this,” said Leetonia coach Matt Altomare. “We didn’t turn the ball over and we sustained a few drive, but we weren’t able to get points when we needed to.
“You hate to give away a score at the end there, but if they kneel it three plays, we don’t have a chance.”
McDonald increased its lead to 21-13 with 1:01 left, giving Leetonia one last opportunity to extend the game into overtime.
Selway completed two long passes to Trummer to advance the ball to the Blue Devils’ 20 yard line with under 30 seconds to go.
After three straight incompletions, Leetonia was down to its last play.
Selway found Justin Colella in the back of the end zone, who caught the ball, but couldn’t get a foot in bounds.