Team

Western Reserve

Record	Div.	Conf.
8/2	Div. VII	Mahoning Valley Athletic Conference

Western Reserve Regional Champs

Gallery

Western Reserve 13-0 wins 49-7

By Matthew Peaslee

mpeaslee@vindy.com

BERLIN CENTER

The Haka is a traditional chant performed for generations in many Polynesian islands. The Hawaii Warriors have done it at games and it’s a ritual custom practiced by New Zealand rugby teams. If you’ve never seen it done before, Google it, YouTube it or check out a Western Reserve football game.

While the version pulled off by the Blue Devils isn’t quite like that of Hawaiian and New Zealand fame, it’s intense, exciting and most of all, special.

“It’s actually an old Native American warrior chant,” Western Reserve coach Andy Hake said of his team’s rendition. “It’s great. The kids like it and it’s a motivational thing.”

Hake first saw it done at a Youngstown State football camp when he was younger and noticed that Coach Mark Asher did it at East Liverpool and Struthers. Hake suggested it be done at Mineral Ridge, Rayen and East when he was an assistant at each of those schools.

“I always thought it was cool,” Hake said.

So do his players.

“I love it,” wide receiver Thomas Benyo said. “It gets us all fired up.”

“It’s been a team building thing,” running back Donnie Bolton said.

“It’s just a cool tradition for us,” lineman Aaron Halls said.

The players know it has a special meaning and that it ultimately promotes team unity and sticking up for each other. While it’s difficult to translate the ancient words to modern day English, they say it was easy to learn and they had fun doing it.

“We did it once at a practice two years ago and it took like 10 minutes [to learn],” Halls said. ”That was it.”

The Blue Devils do their chanting demonstration before the game to get pumped up and afterwards in celebration of a victory. If you’re counting, that means it’s been done 13 times in 2011 — or, after every single game.

“It gives us a little edge to know that we’re undefeated,” Benyo said. “No one has touched us yet.”

But they have been stung — by the flu bug.

In last week’s Division VI Region 21 final against Shadyside, a number of Blue Devils were fighting off the sickness and still playing their hearts out in a 49-7 beatdown of the Tigers. Quarterback Jeff Clegg may have caught the worst end of it, though, and still turned it into one of his best performances of the year. The senior and four-year starter threw for 223 yards, ran for another 34 and engineered many spectacular drives including a 63-yard pitch-and-catch to Tim Cooper for a touchdown. That play first looked dead from the start, but Clegg evaded a number of tacklers in the backfield and ran from sideline-to-sideline before squaring up for the bomb.

“If we would have lost the game I would have felt a lot worse,” Clegg said as he is still feeling some lingering flu-like symptoms.

Hake is not a doctor, he’s a teacher on the football field and in the classroom. However, he may have taken a page from the old Native American ways of curing a disease. Actually, it could have been from the same book that he developed Reserve’s notorious cheer.

“Adrenaline is the most powerful drug,” he said.

The Blue Devils got a big dose of it in last Saturday’s game,

but it’s really been in them all season long. From a 52-19 win over Mathews to open up the year to the regular-season finale that got the 22-year-old McDonald monkey off their back — desire fuels this team.

“There’s a lot of fight in our guys and a will to win,” Bolton said. “We don’t let anything get in the way of our goals.”