By John Rozum

sports@vindy.com

COLUMBIANA

To say the least, Friday night in Columbiana belonged to the Clippers, who defeated the Mineral Ridge Rams 55-7, in an Inter Tri-County League game at Firestone Park.

It was a game where Columbiana had seven different players carry the football, and five different receivers caught passes, but it all led back to quarterback Austin Barbato, who accounted for 337 total yards and accounted for six of the Clippers’ eight touchdowns.

“He’s a three year starter for us, he’s a 1,000/1,000 guy and hopefully we stay alive and get that next week,” said Columbiana coach Bob Spaite. “He takes care of the ball and is one of the really good decision-makers I’ve had.”

Early on it was clear that the Clippers wanted to establish the passing game.

Two of Barbato’s first six pass attempts both went for TDs. The first was a 51-yarder to Jake DeJong and the second to Trenton Solmen from 43 yards out.

By halftime Columbiana had built a 35-0 lead, and they extended it to 48-0 early in the fourth quarter when backup QB Nate Huk scampered 66 yards for another TD.

“You see what you do here and you see how you stack up against others, and I like our young guys getting the experience, but they know they got a lot of work ahead of them,” said Rams coach Joe Stevens.

Mineral Ridge was able to have some success in moving the ball a few times, but they couldn’t cash it in until running back Devine Redding broke a few tackles and went 77 of his 125 yards in the fourth quarter.

“We got to do a better job of not shooting ourselves in the foot,” said Stevens. “We moved the ball up and down the field a few times, but we put the ball on the ground, drop a pass, or we give up a couple easy scores just because we blow our coverage.”

As for Columbiana, despite finishing the regular season 8-2 Spaite knows there’s still some improving that needs to be done.

“The biggest thing we got to fix are the penalties,” said Spaite. “Sometimes we play so hard we let our emotions bleed into it and we end up doing a little more than we should, because statistically we’ve done a nice job.”