Team

Boardman

Record	Div.	Conf.
6/5	Div. II	All-American Conference Gold Tier

Perry vs Boardman

Gallery

Massillon Perry vs Boardman

By JOE SCALZO

scalzo@vindy.com

BOARDMAN

On Friday night, the Boardman High football team showed it could handle a little bit of adversity.

And Perry showed it wasn’t quite ready to handle success.

The Spartans shook off some key injuries and a pair of disappointing losses over the past three weeks to knock off the state’s 10th-ranked team in Division I, holding off Perry 19-13 in one of those hold-your-breath Federal League games at Spartan Stadium.

“It was definitely a pivotal game for our season,” said senior running back Nick Buonavolonta, who had missed the previous two games with a high ankle sprain. “It boosts our confidence a lot and now we’re back in the hunt.”

After taking a 19-7 lead midway through the third quarter, Boardman (3-2, 1-1) had to sweat out a late Perry drive in the game’s closing seconds.

The Panthers (4-1, 1-1) cut their deficit to six with just under 10 minutes left in the fourth quarter on a 10-yard touchdown run by Jon Miller.

Perry then held Boardman to just one first down on its ensuing series, getting the ball back at its own 23 with 6:44 remaining. Ten plays and 54 yards later, the Panthers had a first down at the Boardman 33 with just over a minute left.

After two running plays managed just 7 yards and drained crucial seconds off the clock, Perry was left with no timeouts and a third-and-3 at the Boardman 26. Perry QB Cody Minor then threw two incompletions — the last broken up by Spartans safety Dayne Hammond near the 10 — to end the suspense.

“We were extremely flat,” said Perry coach Keith Boedicker, whose team had three turnovers in the first half. “We didn’t know how to handle success very well, that’s the bottom line. This team has not gotten much publicity and I think we read the papers a little bit too much.

“But we won’t have to worry about that anymore.”

Buonavolonta ran 13 times for 141 yards, including a 52-yard touchdown run that ended Boardman’s scoring in the third quarter.

Boardman senior QB Trae Robinson also played well, completing all three of his passes for 82 yards and a touchdown that came on a nifty screen pass to Hammond, who took it 33 yards to the end zone. Devin Campbell had the other touchdown on a 17-yard run early in the first quarter.

“It makes for a great night,” said Boardman coach D.J. Ogilvie, whose team had lost to Lake and Mooney in recent weeks. “For the most part we’ve been playing tough but we cut down on a lot of mental errors.”

The Spartans also got a boost from sophomore middle linebacker Justin Babos, who had three tackles for loss and forced a fumble in his first game as a defensive starter.

“He’s a hard-core, hard-nosed kid,” said Ogilvie of Babos, who has also started on the offensive line the past few weeks. “He has a nose for the football. We had a couple injuries on defense and he had to step up and play and he did well.

“It’s gonna be hard to take him out.”