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A few minutes after last week’s win over Howland, Poland High coach Mark Brungard praised his senior kicker, Kyle Filicky, who had been featured in an article that morning about football players who are in the marching band.
“I don’t know how he played at halftime, but he sure kicked well,” Brungard said. “The Vindicator jinx didn’t work on Filicky. He had a great night.”
I smirked. In that same paper, I quoted Salem coach Mike Kopachy as being wary of the Vindicator jinx. (The jinxed Quakers beat Struthers 41-7.)
Now. We don’t want to perpetuate myths involving a Vindicator jinx, particularly on a group of people as paranoid as coaches.
(In their defense, football coaches aren’t as bad as basketball coaches. See Moschella, Ron.)
So I decided to look back at our Blitz regular season front pages from the last two years, focusing on stories where we featured one team, just to see if there was anything truth to it.
(If this sounds like an easy column intro, I’ve got three words for you: correct-a-mundo.
I focused on front page stories — Sports Illustrated only has a cover jinx, after all — and came to one clear conclusion: We rarely feature specific teams.
In fact, we only had five such stories this season and two last year. We’re much more likely to preview games, which renders a jinx moot.
Most of last year’s Blitz stories focused on specific players (we actually had two features on kickers last year, which is at least one too many) and none of them suffered injuries in the next week’s game, as far as I know.
As for the seven instances where we focused on one school? Those teams went 5-2 the following week, including 4-1 this year.
Maybe the jinx is a good thing.
Staying positive
South Range may not be jinxed, but it is in the midst of (possibly) its first losing season since 1995.
That was Dan Yeagley’s first season and he went 4-6. Since then, he’s led to the Raiders to eight league titles and 11 playoff berths.
They’re 2-5 this year, having lost three games by a touchdown or less, including a 31-28 loss to undefeated Crestview last week.
“The kids played really good the past two weeks,” said Yeagley, who can be forgiven for not using “well” considering the man teaches honors calculus. “We are slowly getting better and we are gaining experience every week. With so many injuries we need to play younger kids but in the long run that will help us in the future.”
The Raiders entered this season with just nine seniors — there’s 22 juniors on the roster — and just three returning starters on each side of the ball, so Yeagley knew it would be a rebuilding year.
That doesn’t make it easier, though.
“The kids are handling the season better then I am,” he said. “They seem to bounce back pretty easy. As for me, I am such a competitor and I really hate to lose. But in the big picture we are gaining experience.”
He’s also appreciated the fans’ response. He hasn’t had a single “For Sale” sign in his yard.
“The community is a football community and they see what is going on,” he said. “They know the game and as of right now they are very patient.”
By the way, the Raiders play a 6-1 East Palestine team this week. So if they lose, no jinx talk, OK?
Power poll:
Big schools (Division I-III): 1. Mooney, 2. Poland, 3. Boardman, 4. Fitch, 5. Warren Harding. Honorable mention: Hubbard, Howland.
Small schools (Division IV-VI): 1. Ursuline, 2. Girard, 3. Crestview, 4. McDonald, 5. Lakeview. Honorable mention: East Palestine, Western Reserve, Warren JFK.
Other thoughts
- The ridiculous line of the week comes from Southington’s Jimmy Rasey: 52 carries, 296 yards, four TDs in a 27-12 win over Ledgemont.
It seems incredible considering Southington lost back-to-back games to Conneaut (1-6) and Sebring (1-6) to start the year — Rasey missed the first three games because of injury, all losses — but the Wildcats (3-3) are now 11th in the Region 21 computer ratings.
They couldn’t make the playoffs, could they?
- One of the most irritating things for a football fan on Saturday morning is opening the paper, looking for a story on your favorite team and seeing this sentence: Details of the game were not reported.
So, here’s a quick explanation. We cover between 8-10 games every week, either with a staff writer or a correspondent. (This is really good for a paper our size.)
For the rest of the games, we rely on coaches and statisticians to report the results. If, by 11 p.m. or so, we haven’t heard anything, we’ll often call other newspapers, or try to contact a coach or statistician to get the results.
Sometimes we succeed, sometimes we don’t. But we encourage schools to contact us win or lose, home or away, preferably by fax to (330) 747-6712 or e-mail, sports@vindy.com.
This policy goes for other sports, too. And if we get a result, we use it 100 percent of the time.
So the next time you see that sentence, know this: We tried.
- One of the best things for a football fan on Saturday morning is seeing their favorite team’s game on the front page, along with a really cool picture.
If you really like a picture, you might wonder, “Can I buy a copy?”
And the answer is, yes.
Go to Vindy.com and click on Marketplace, then click on Photo Store. That’s where you’ll find every photo that appeared in each day’s paper.
You can also buy a reprint of any page in the Vindy, so if you really liked the front cover of Blitz and you want it framed, check out the photo store.
Joe Scalzo covers high school football for The Vindicator. Write to him at scalzo@vindy.com.